Kerim Nisancioglu, professor at the Universiety of Bergen and the Bjerknes Center for Climate Research are preparing researchers going to the Greenland Ice Sheet this summer for field work on the ice. As last summer Bjerknes researchers will participate in the EastGrip coring project at the Northeastern part of Greenland.
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During the last days of March, the researchers got all they needed for a safety course: fog, winds, snow and sleet. Danish colleagues in the ice2ice project joined Bjerknes researchers joined the course with skilled glacier guides as instructors.
The Bjerknes Centre is one of the partners in the international coring project EastGRIP, coordinated by the Center for Ice and Climate at the University of Copenhagen. The main objective is to capture an ice core counting 2550 meters from the North East Greenland Ice Stream. The project started up last year, and will last until 2020.
The ice stream beneath the coring station is moving at a speed of 60 meter per year. This ice streamed is recogned to be one of the fastest in ice streams, and coring in an ice stream moving this fast has not been done before.
The ice stream is moving ice from the ice sheet on top of Greenland out in the ocean. Data from the ice cores provides new knowledge on the ice stream and how this possible impacts on the oceans.
