Glaciologist studies Greenland snow conditions and helps calibrate CryoSat instrument

Abstract

GREENLAND—On a typically frigid mid‐July day at Summit Station, almost smack in the middle of Greenland, with the temperature hovering around −10°C, Elizabeth Morris and John Sweeny were bundled up against the cold atop their black Ski‐Doo snowmobiles, which Morris described as being similar to motorcycles on ski tracks. They drove the vehicles—without yet attaching three wooden sleds that would be pulled during their summer scientific traverse across part of central Greenland—on a practice spin along the perimeter of Summit's groomed, approximately 4600‐meter × 60‐meter snow runway. One of the longest runways in the world, it lies atop 3.2 kilometers of ice, with the horizon stretching in every direction. Morris, a glaciologist who is a senior associate at the Scott Polar Research Institute at Cambridge University, United Kingdom, and Sweeny, her polar guide, were taking advantage of an unexpected extra day at Summit, a scientific research station sponsored by the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF), before the traverse began. They hoped that the socked‐in visibility just a few hours earlier that morning, 16 July, would not be repeated the following day so that a U.S. Air National Guard 109th Airlift Wing C‐130 cargo plane would be cleared to fly to Summit from Kangerlussuaq on Greenland's west coast with needed supplies. Morris and Sweeny would load up each sled with about 270 kilograms of gear.