We’re off again!
Hello and welcome to the third installment of the Greenland Aquifer Team blog. We are back at it again this year to study the water hidden below the surface of the Greenland Ice Sheet. For background, if you have a lot of reading time, you can check out all of the blog posts (including those from previous years) here, or for a quick synopses check out the press release on our 2014 science papers resulting from our work here.
This season should be an exciting one. The National Science Foundation (NSF) and NASA are funding us to do a lot more work this season to better understand how much water is being stored in the Greenland Ice Sheet and what that ultimately means for all of you reading this. Note: If you are reading this while on spring break from a nice chair on the beach you should pay attention because over the next few decades the melt from Greenland will raise global sea levels. The only remaining questions are how much and how fast? Our team will play a small roll in answering these science questions by drilling, pounding, radiating, and penetrating into the aquifer in southeast Greenland.
Over the next five to six weeks, this blog will cover not only our science but also our adventures conducting science in one of the harshest regions on Earth. This year will be BIGGER. More measurements, more people, more time in the field, and more blogs. (More blogs assuming the satellite phone data link works. After all, this is field work so we never know.) Everyone on our team will contribute to the blogs so I will introduce them here quickly and you will hear more about each of them and their work in the weeks to come. Enjoy the blogs! We take off for Greenland on March 27, so look for our next installment about our trip from New York to Kangerlussuaq, Greenland, soon.
Greenland Aquifer Team 2015
Top row left to right: Josh Goetz, Lead driller from the Ice Drilling Design and Operations group at the University of Wisconsin-Madison; Clément Miège, Post-doctoral student, radar lead, and Greenland Aquifer team veteran from the University of Utah; Kip Solomon, Professor and ground water hydrology lead from the University of Utah; and Lynn Montgomery, Undergraduate student and seismic team member from the University of Maryland.
Bottom row left to right: Anatoly Legtchenko, Director of research and electromagnetic resonance lead from the Laboratoire d’étude des Transferts en Hydrologie et Environnement (Laboratory of Hydrology and Environment); Lora Koenig, Research scientist, ice core lead and Greenland Aquifer team veteran from the National Snow and Ice Data Center at the University of Colorado; Olivia Miller, Graduate student and ground water hydrology team from the University of Utah; and Nick Schmerr, Assistant professor and seismic lead from the University of Maryland.
