GC-Net and PROMICE weather station 2022 fieldtrip to NE Greenland
In May 2022, a team went to NE Greenland to install new automatic weather stations (AWS) and perform AWS maintanence at four existing sites. Two of these are referred to NASA-E and TUNU, which are located in the interior part of the ice sheet and associated with the Greenland Climate Network (GC-Net). The other two are known as KPC-U (upper) and KPC-L (lower), which are located at the ice sheet periphery and part of the Programme for Monitoring of the Greenland Ice Sheet (PROMICE). The locations of these stations can be viewed here.
The AWS stations were visited using a Twin Otter plane, flying to them from Mestersvig and Danmarkshavn.
NASA-E
Building the new GC-Net station at NASA-E. The weather was a little breezy, so a shelter was put up to shield those working on the station from the cold wind
The current GC-Net station at NASA-E. Although it is not transmitting anymore, it is still recording data which was collected during this trip
The new GC-Net station in position. As it was the first station visit of the trip, we took a long time at this site - 8 hours in total
TUNU
We arrived at TUNU GC-Net station to find that we were not alone. A team from the US had set up a drilling camp within the visible distance. They came over in their 4x4s to say hello
The new GC-Net station up and running at TUNU. We spent 5 hours at TUNU - much quicker than our 8-hour stint the day before
KPC-U and KPC-L
I think this is my favourite photo I took this trip. On this day, we knew that we had to install two PROMICE stations in one day (at KPC_U and KPC_L), so it was tight timing
The new PROMICE station at KPC_U. A GNSS antenna is set up to log the position of the station for validation purposes, and provides us with an excellent opportunity for a breather (and a photo). This is why the GNSS antenna can be been seen in most of these photos
Very few photos were taken at KPC_L due to time constraints, which was not helped by a tricky landing with the Twin Otter. Crevasses were spotted around the current KPC_L location, so the new PROMICE station had to be set-up further away than expected (roughly 700 m)