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Tomas ovanpå den största snövallen, där taket på pistmaskinen kan anas bakom.

Postat januari 11, 2019januari 16, 2019 Full storlek 1000 × 667

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Snow cover and ice are shrinking almost everywhere in the world. Recently, @IPCC_CH released a special report on the ocean and cryosphere in a changing climate (SROCC) https://www.ipcc.ch/srocc/home/ . Not only mountain glaciers and Arctic ice caps, but Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets are shrinking rapidly and the amount of ice loss between 2006 and 2015 increased the global sea level by 1.8 cm. We need to investigate how the ice mass has been changed in the past and is changing presently, and mechanisms behind them, all of which are keys to predict the future of our planet. Photo: Peter Leopold #IPCC #SROCC #Climatechange #oceanography #cryosphere #npolar #norwegianpolarinstitute #norskpolarinstitutt #research #glaciology #glacier #ice #science #fieldphotofriday #fieldwork #scicomm #forskkomm #Arctic #Antarctic
Polar science is an interdisciplinary subject, requiring collaboration between scientists in several different fields. So, whilst @NPIglaciology scientists may not get to participate in cruises on the Norwegian Polar Institute’s new icebreaker Kronprins Haakon, and see views like this one, we can certainly benefit from the data that are collected. Glacier melt is sensitive to the temperature of the air and ocean. In Svalbard, the West Spitsbergen Current transports warm Atlantic water to the west of the archipelago, warming the fjords, reducing sea ice formation, and losing heat to the atmosphere, which in turn leads to a longer melt season on the glaciers. Ice-ocean interaction is a major driver in the retreat, acceleration and dynamic thinning of large marine-terminating glaciers in Greenland, and the thinning of ice shelves and acceleration of ice streams in west Antarctica. Measurements of ocean temperature, salinity and current velocity from ships and moorings are crucial to understanding of glacier change in the Arctic and Antarctic. Photo: Kit Kovacs/Christian Lydersen, NP #npolar #norwegianpolarinstitute #norskpolarinstitutt #research #glaciology #glacier #ice #seaice #oceanography #icebreaker #cruise #science #cryosphere #fieldphotofriday #fieldwork #scicomm #forskkomm #Svalbard #Antarctica #Arctic #ffkronprinshaakon
Never judge a glacier from its look! It’s the inside that counts, and some glaciers can be much more powerful than they appear. Take a look at the glacier to the left, a small valley glacier in eastern Svalbard called Ganskijbreen, like it appeared in aerial photos from summer 2011. Eight years later on 18 August 2019, the Sentinel-2 satellite captured an image where the glacier has completely changed character. The surface has transitioned from a smooth ski-able surface to a maze of crevasses that no one would think of crossing, except perhaps a polar bear. The glacier snout has advanced by over 1.5 km, which is quite impressive for a glacier that used to be a mere 4 km long. But the advance doesn’t mean that the glacier has actually grown, it is largely just a transfer of ice from the upper parts of the glacier to the lower parts of the glacier, like a collapsing sandcastle. Soon the glacier will run out of power and gradually start to retreat like the vast majority of other glaciers on Svalbard and worldwide. Sometime in the more distant future the glacier might again crack-up and re-advance, and such cyclic behaviour has been observed for a number of Svalbard glaciers, known as a surge cycle. But little is known about the impact of climate change on such dynamical instabilities, and that’s one of the topics we research at @npiglaciology. Image courtesy: NPI #npolar #norwegianpolarinstitute #norskpolarinstitutt #research #glaciology #ice #svalbard #glacier #surge #crevasses #science #cryosphere #fieldphotofriday #fieldwork #scicomm #forskkomm
Some of us are lucky enough to spend time in April/May and September at the Ny-Ålesund Research Station in Svalbard, where we carry out the spring and autumn glacier mass balance measurements. Besides there being less snow in autumn, a difference between the two seasons is that spectacular sunsets are more frequent in September. And they can be long too, since we are at such a high latitude; this gives the photographer enough time to scramble to an optimal vantage point. So, here is another beautiful, dramatic sunset. But to keep this post to its glaciological theme, note the two antennas to the left of the sun. These are part of the Norwegian Mapping Authority's Geodetic Earth Observatory on Svalbard, a fundamental part of a network of stations which define the global geodetic reference frame. Data from the observatory are crucial for the positioning of GPS and other satellites, both important tools in glaciology, as well as for monitoring uplift rates arising from the nearby shrinking glaciers, which are retreating in response to the ongoing climate change. #beautifulsunset #arcticsunset #nyaalesund #nyalesund #svalbard #polar #arctic #norskpolarinstitutt #norwegianpolarinstitute #npolar #satellitedish #norwegianmappingauthority #vlbi #verylongbaselineinterferometry #research #fieldwork #cryosphere #glacier #glaciers #glaciology #glaciologists #massbalance #fieldseason #climate #climatechange

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