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Lisa Lolk Hauge og Benoit S. Lecavalier øver på breredning under sikkerhetskurset ved Folgefonna. Foto: Ellen Viste

Preparing for Greenland

Fog, wind, snow and sleet. Not so good for hiking, but perfect for a safety course at the Folgefonna glacier. Flip through the pictures!

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Kerim Nisancioglu, professor at the Universiety of Bergen and the Bjerknes Center for Climate Research are preparing researchers going to the Greenland Ice Sheet this summer for field work on the ice. As last summer Bjerknes researchers will participate in the EastGrip coring project at the Northeastern part of Greenland.

Read also: Minus twenty degrees summer

Tåke på vei opp til Fonnabu
A snowy ground makes the fog even more troublesome. Photo: Ellen Viste

During the last days of March, the researchers got all they needed for a safety course: fog, winds, snow and sleet. Danish colleagues in the ice2ice project joined Bjerknes researchers joined the course with skilled glacier guides as instructors. 

Breredning ved Fonnabu
Glacier rescue rehearsal in a steep hill. Photo: Ellen Viste

The Bjerknes Centre is one of the partners in the international coring project EastGRIP, coordinated by the  Center for Ice and Climate at the University of Copenhagen. The main objective is to capture an ice core counting 2550 meters from the North East Greenland Ice Stream. The project started up last year, and will last until 2020. 

The ice stream beneath the coring station is moving at a speed of 60 meter per year. This ice streamed is recogned to be one of the fastest in ice streams, and coring in an ice stream moving this fast has not been done before. 

The ice stream is moving ice from the ice sheet on top of Greenland out in the ocean. Data from the ice cores provides new knowledge on the ice stream and how this possible impacts on the oceans. 

Utsikt mot fjell og fjorder
Finally some view! The Norwegian fjords were formed by ice streams quite similar to the Northeast Greenland ice stream. Photo: Ellen Viste