image: Icebreaker Oden at the northern coast of Greenland. Photo: Martin Jakobsson
Credit: Martin Jakobsson/Stockholm University
In August, Swedish icebreaker Oden will sail to northern Greenland's hard-to-reach waters. Researchers on board will study how melting glaciers contribute to raising global sea level. On 17 June, work will begin to prepare Oden for this year's expedition.
In the beginning of August, icebreaker Oden will leave the port of Thule in northwestern Greenland with 40 scientists on board representing universities and research institutes in six countries. Oden will then be at sea for over six weeks. The ice situation can be very difficult along northern Greenland. There is a risk that the sea ice will cause challenges and that Oden cannot enter the Victoria Fjord, which is one of the expedition's main targets. Therefore, several alternative research plans have been developed.
The expedition's focus is to investigate how much and how fast the ice sheet in North Greenland can contribute to the rise of global sea level. Knowledge is currently unsatisfactory about what happens when melting glaciers meet the sea and ice turns to water. It is important to better understand these processes and at what speed they take place, mainly to be able to develop scenarios for how much the global sea level will rise along with a warmer climate.
The expedition is planned and carried out logistically by the Swedish Polar Research Secretariat, which rents icebreaker Oden from the Swedish Maritime Administration during the summer months. The two scientific leaders are from Stockholm University: Martin Jakobsson, Professor of Marine Geology and Geophysics, and Nina Kirchner, Professor of Glaciology. Half of the researchers participating in the expedition work at Stockholm University and are active in fields such as marine geology, geophysics, geochemistry, glaciology, oceanography and palaeogenetics (ancient DNA).
Part of a larger study of Greenland's glaciers
The expedition is part of a broader research program, the North Greenland Earth-Ocean-Ecosystem Observatory (GEOEO), and this summer's expedition will be the third with Oden to northern Greenland. Martin Jakobsson has led the two previous expeditions, Petermann 2015 and Ryder 2019, together with American colleagues. This summer's expedition, North of Greenland 2024, will take the researchers to C.H. Ostenfeld glacier, neighboring Petermann and Ryder glaciers.
"During the Ryder 2019 expedition, Oden became the first ship to reach the fjord where Ryder Glacier flows into the sea. We mapped a shallow area in front of the glacier that partially blocks warmer water from entering the fjord, where it otherwise could melt the glacier’s floating ice tongue from below. This may explain why the Ryder Glacier has melted less than the nearby Petermann Glacier in recent decades. Now, we aim for the next unexplored fjord, where C.H. Ostenfeld Glacier is located. It has basically lost all of its floating ice tongue since 2002, and the reasons are unknown. We need data from these inaccessible fjords to improve our projections of the development of the Greenland ice sheet in a warmer climate and its impact on global sea level," says Martin Jakobsson.
Nina Kirchner is the other scientific leader of the expedition. Her research on board Oden is focused on glacier tongues along the coast of northern Greenland. She brings with her on the expedition instruments and vehicles that will help investigate and visualize the parts of the glacier that are usually hidden from the human eye or too dangerous to study up close. Among other things, an autonomous underwater vehicle, developed by the KTH Royal Institute of Technology, will go under the ice tongue to carry out unique measurements.
"The final preparations and tests for the expedition are in full swing, and now I look forward to the actual expedition starting! If nothing unforeseen happens to all the instruments, sensors and vehicles, we will come home with unique data from an area that can be seen as a key area for the stability of the North Greenland ice sheet. But that's not the end, as we then start to feed this data into numerical models, which can provide better forecasts of future sea level rise," says Nina Kirchner.
In addition to research on board Oden, a research group led by palaeogeneticist Love Dalén at Stockholm University will collect samples on land.
Oden's research equipment will be loaded and tested in the Swedish port of Helsingborg on June 17. On July 15, Oden will leave Sweden bound for Greenland.
Researchers at University of New Hampshire, University of Adelaide, University of Basel, University Centre in Svalbard, University of Copenhagen, University of Copenhagen, University of California San Diego, University of Gothenburg, KTH Royal Institute of Technology and Linnaeus University are also participating in the expedition.
Read more
Article on Stockholm University´s web: Heading for Greenland to study melting glaciers
Website for the North of Greenland 2024 expedition – Swedish Polar Research Secretariat
Contact
Martin Jakobsson, Co-Chief Scientist (questions about the expedition and research)
Professor of Marine Geology and Geophysics at Stockholm University
Phone: ++46736-19 14 09 E-mail: martin.jakobsson@geo.su.se
Nina Kirchner, Co-Chief Scientist (questions about the expedition and the research)
Professor of Glaciology at Stockholm University
Phone: ++4670-609 05 88 E-mail: nina.kirchner@su.se
Åsa Lindgren (questions about the expedition and Oden as a research platform)
Expedition coordinator and head of unit for ship-based research support at the Swedish Polar Research Secretariat
Phone: ++5670-785 56 01 E-mail: asa.lindgren@polar.se