This award is funded under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (Public Law 111-5).
Funds are provided to examine the nature and cause of short-term ice sheet velocity changes. The work field would occur near Swiss Camp, Greenland and focus on the interactions between the ice sheet, the atmosphere and the bed through an integrated observational approach which involves borehole geo- physics, surface-based GPS and modeling. The PIs propose to: (1) measure changes in the subglacial water system over the summer season using borehole water pressure transducers; (2) measure the ice sheet response to changes in basal conditions with surface-based GPS and measured rates of borehole deformation; (3) measure englacial and basal temperatures for input into flow models and to constrain estimates of ice deformation and; (4) correlate these data to melt and surface water volume proxies based on remote sensing data and meteorological data available from GC-Net and measured lake volume. The PIs intend to collaborate with Drs. Martin Funk and Martin Luthi, who have submitted a proposal to the Swiss Nation Science Foundation.
