When the New York Air National Guard travels to Kangerlussuaq, they toss in a few fishing poles with the baggage for whatever few hours of free time might be available. A favored pastime for this location’s summer assignments means the local lakes are well known by the crew, so when we sat down to map out the flight plan, a request for locating lakes met with an easy nod. No problem at all. It took only seconds to register that our definition of lakes might differ from theirs.
We are interested in lakes atop the ice sheet surface, places where the ice sheet melt is puddled into lakes of various sizes. It is in locations like these lakes where water, with its darker color, absorbs more heat from the sun than the surrounding white ice surface. This process can contribute to more melt, and in some instances the water finds a weak “joint” in the ice and drains right down to the bottom. Both the extent of the ponding and this process are of interest to the science community in better understanding the ice sheet.
The guard is quick to assure us, no problem, these too can be located!
It was an “optics day,” where our focus is on the cameras in IcePod. Using both our Bobcat (visible wavelength) and our (IR) infrared cameras, we will image surface lakes and the meandering meltwater channels on the ice sheet surface, and then fly over a few of the southwest fjords to image meltwater as it plumes at the calving edge of the ice sheet. This is a day that Chris Zappa, our resident oceanographer and optics expert, has been waiting patiently for. The weather is perfect, the sky crystal clear, and the instruments are humming. We are ready to go.
The surface of the ice sheet barely resembles our April visit. Large lakes, some a mile across, are printed along the ice sheet surface, as if a skipping stone has skimmed along the surface leaving pockets of water in its wake.
These ice surface lakes are viewed more cautiously than our lakes back home, as they pose a threat of suddenly emptying through a “moulin” or drainage tube. Moulins transfer water from the surface to the bottom of the ice sheet in short order, circumventing a process that could otherwise take many thousands of years. Cutting across the surface in various patterns, meandering channels carry the melting surface water into these catchment pools. On the ice sheet these channels are the equivalent of streams from our home communities. Back home they collect runoff and drain into freshwater lakes. Here they serve the same function but are more striking, as there are no plants to screen them.
The cameras work furiously. The Bobcat, is a 29-megapixel camera. The IR samples at 100 frames per second. Both cameras collect a staggering 60 gigabytes a second. Images play across the screen showing the temperature contrasts as we move over the surface features.
We move from the ice sheet to the coastline, where rugged mountains circle Greenland’s perimeter like a crown. Fjords cut through in many areas, allowing deeply stacked ice in the interior to move off the land. Today we are flying down small “arms” of Godthaab Fjord with a focus on their leading edges, where the ice meets the Atlantic water. We are interested in how the IR camera can be used to track thermal plumes at the interface of the cold glacier meltwater and the warmer ocean water. Combining both the Bobcat and the IR cameras allows sediment plumes to be tracked moving through the fjord. Sediment should warm faster than the surrounding water, and may be transferring more heat into the system. Both will tell us about circulation, mixing and transit of the glacial meltwater systems.
Flying back down the fjord we pass over a small fishing town perched on the edge of the water. There is no apparent movement below. Perhaps they have gone fishing?
For more about the IcePod project: http://www.ldeo.columbia.edu/icepod
