Essay

This photograph shows our fieldwork from May 2022, where a small team of us went to the northeast of the Greenland Ice Sheet. We operate and maintain a network of weather stations on the ice sheet, under two projects called PROMICE (Programme for Monitoring of the Greenland Ice Sheet) and GC-Net (Greenland Climate Network), which have been in operation since 1993 and 2007, respectively.

Our weather stations are custom-made for surviving on the Ice Sheet, monitoring conditions at the surface including meteorological measurements (e.g. air temperature, pressure, wind speed etc.) and ice measurements such as albedo (the brightness of the surface), snow accumulation and ice temperature. We currently have over 40 weather stations on the Ice Sheet, which we aim to visit every year as part of annual field campaigns. The data from these stations is used in international climate change reporting, and more recently is being ingested into weather observation and forecasting models. We access our weather stations via helicopter or twin-otter plane, flying and re-fueling from airbases on the coastline. These flights are not quick hops on and off the Ice Sheet, taking up to 4 hours to fly from the coastline to the Ice Sheet interior.

This photograph of one of our station visits shows a diverse range of aspects involved in our fieldwork. Our field team consisted of four people including myself, who is behind the camera. This trip was my first time taking part in this type of fieldwork, visiting weather station sites and parts of Greenland that I had never seen before. My role on this trip was to largely assist in the installation of new weather stations and simultaneously gain insights into reimagining how we make data from these weather stations useful for scientists around the world. For myself, the product of this fieldwork was a complete overhaul of our processing suite. As a result, we now deliver data from station-to-scientist in under 15 minutes, with data transmitted hourly from each weather station.

You will see on the right that our Master’s student has been digging a snow pit and is taking notes on what he sees in the different layers of snow he has been digging through. We dig snow pits to look at the texture, hardness (from compaction) and colour of the snow, which provides insight into the snowfall in the area since our last visit. Our weather stations have laser finders attached to them which measure the distance between the instrument and the snow surface. As snowfall accumulates, the distance between the laser finder and the snow surface reduces, which we can see in the data from our weather stations. We dig snow pits to validate the data and ensure that what we see in the data is reflected on the ground.

Our technician is the furthest left in the photograph. We bring a technician on each of our field campaigns, as they are the brains behind the engineering of our weather stations. Scientists are present to ensure that our weather stations provide the best data, representative of the surroundings. So, our technicians are essential personnel for technical maintenance and troubleshooting. The Ice Sheet is a harsh environment, with temperatures down to -50 degrees Celsius in the deep winter. It is therefore no surprise that our weather stations need technical tender, love and care from highly qualified engineers, as well as scientists. There are many scientists who depend on our weather station data in their process studies, satellite studies, and modelling efforts, and our main priority is to ensure that data reaches them in a consistent and accurate manner.

Finally, our field leader is the figure in the centre of the photograph, carrying a clipboard between the two weather stations seen here. It may seem strange that there are two weather stations occupying this site, but our work has been in an exciting transitionary phase. We have been updating our weather stations, so many stations are being replaced with all-new tripods and instruments. As a result, many of the sites have had two weather stations installed for a transitionary overlapping period. Given the expense and effort to visit the Ice Sheet and all our weather stations, it makes sense to keep both installations operational until we are confident in the new station version. Once we are confident that all is working smoothly then we will decommission and remove the older station versions. Since 2021, we have installed over 20 new weather stations. Our team has also grown within this short period to accommodate this extra work, with tight communication and collaboration ensuring that all work is carried out effectively and in a safe manner.

The field leader is carrying a clipboard here, noting down the condition of the two weather stations pictured here. We measure aspects about the weather stations that are important to our measurements when we are in the field, such as how much a station is tilting and its orientation in relation to the sun. The "health" of a weather station can have a large impact on its measurements. This is especially prevalent at the periphery of the Ice Sheet, where the ice is more dynamic as it is flowing faster, and crevasses are more likely to open and propagate. Luckily at the site pictured here, we are quite high up on the Ice Sheet (860 metres above sea level) so the ice is flowing slower. The landscape on top of the Ice Sheet here resembles a desert, with the ice expanse as far as the eye can see. The ice is a beautiful and calm setting, whilst the work we perform here can be strenuous and stressful. The juxtaposition of this chaos and beauty is a breathtaking experience. I think it is hard to represent this in a photograph, and the experience is often difficult to articulate to others once we are home because of the dream-like, ethereal nature of where we perform fieldwork.