A team of ten people from six different countries - Greenland, Canada, Denmark, USA, Belgium and Finland - are gathered at the Zackenberg station in Daneborg, NE Greenland (74N) in leg three of this year’s comprehensive field campaign in the Arctic Science Partnership collaboration.

Research in the local fjord - Young Sound - is carried out intensively from March to October, 2014. Several sub-projects from detailed studies of ice algae and the structure of sea ice to macro scale measurements of eddy fluxes over the sound surface all have the collective objective to understand the effect of climate change on the coupled marine and terrestrial carbon cycles of the northeast Greenland coastal zone.

Researchers from the Arctic Science Partnership have deployed equipment to characterize meteorological fluxes of CO2 over winter to fall seasonal transition of the Young Sound fjord system in north east Greenland.  During leg 3 of the campaign, we have among others measured the meteorological fluxes during melt of the sea ice which is now just below zero degrees at all depth. Several melt ponds are formed at the surface and the sea ice will break up within a couple of weeks.

Tim Papakyriakou (CEOS) and Siiri Wickström (University of Helsinki) collecting meteorological data from the sea ice. Credit: Peter Bondo Christensen.

We now have data from the very cold period with hard frozen ice to the situation with melting ice and sampling will continue from the open water and land during summer and autumn. Commensurate measurements of meteorological elements, the surface heat budget and physical and chemical properties of ocean, sea ice and snow will allow us to place carbon flux measurements in the context of changing ice- and ocean microclimate. We have now also included detailed studies in melt ponds as they develop and disappear just before the sea ice breaks up.  All data will ultimately lead to a better appreciation of the process and its representation in models over a range of spatial and temporal scales. 

Submitted by: Dr. Tim Papakyriakou (CEOS, University of Manitoba)

June 27, 2014