The University of Leeds Centre for Polar Observation and Modelling (CPOM) lead the vital ground based field work conducted as part of the KAREN campaign which took place in October 2016.

Andrew Shepherd and I (Anna Hogg) were based at Ilulissat on the West coast of Greenland, and took 3 helicopter flights up onto the ice sheet. We carried out 3 experiments at 3 field sites on the EGIG line transect, which goes from the ice sheet margin to the dry snow zone at the ice sheet summit.

We collected ice cores to measure snow density and stratigraphy, snow pen data to measure the snow depth to the last summers melt layer, and placed metal surface reflectors on the snow surface to calibrate the airborne measurements.

It was a really successful campaign, despite the cold temperatures of up to –29C! Now that we are back home we look forward to analysing the data to extract what we hope will be some really exciting and important science results.

Post from: Anna Hogg (University of Leeds)