Team with Mirko Scheinert (TU Dresden) and Matthias Braun (FAU Erlangen-Nürnberg) starts measurement campaign in Northeast Greenland

Mirko Scheinert from TU Dresden and Matthias Braun from Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg together with Shfaqat Abbas Khan from DTU Space Copenhagen will start a measurement campaign in north-east Greenland on 13 July 2021, which will be realised from 16 to 25 July 2021.

During the first phase of the joint project GROCE, TU Dresden realised repeated precise GNSS measurements at ten stations in Northeast Greenland. Their evaluation and combination with satellite measurements allowed us to derive a detailed picture of the ice mass balance and the deformation of the Earth's crust. The results were published in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Earth Surface (Kappelsberger et al. 2021). It turned out that the highest deformation rates were recorded at a measuring point on the western side of Lambert Land.

There, Mirko Scheinert, project leader of the GROCE subproject 6 "Glacial isostasy, mass balance and ice dynamics", plans to set up a new, permanently recording GNSS station in the vicinity of the GNSS campaign point LAMW. Another focus is on Zachariae Isstrøm, next to Nioghalvfjerdsbræ the second large outlet glacier of the North-East Greenland Ice Stream (NEGIS). A permanent GNSS station will also be set up there to observe the dynamics and local mass balance of the glacier and to derive the flow velocity.

Matthias Braun, project leader of GROCE subproject 7 "Supraglacial meltwater lakes", focuses on the investigation of supraglacial lakes. Although the extent and location of supraglacial lakes can be detected using remote sensing methods (Hochreuther et al. 2021), there is a lack of information on lake depths to derive corresponding volumes. Depth measurements of lakes on Zachariae Isstrøm will now provide valuable in-situ data.

The field campaign is being carried out in close cooperation with the Danish National Space Institute Copenhagen (DTU Space; Shfaqat Abbas Khan) and in collaboration with the Glaciology Section of the Alfred Wegener Institute, which is also involved in subproject 2 of the GROCE-II joint project. DTU Space, which is significantly involved in permanent GNSS measurements on bedrock (GNET project), will install further GNSS stations on the Zachariae Isstrøm and upstream along the NEGIS. Furthermore, the three participating scientists will undertake work to maintain and re-install AWI glaciology measuring equipment on Nioghalvfjerdsbræ, adjacent to Lambert Land.

BMBF joint project:
"Greenland Ice Sheet - Ocean Interaction: Glazialisostasie, Massenbilanz und Eisdynamik"
(GROCE-II, part 6)

https://tu-dresden.de/bu/umwelt/geo/ipg/gef/forschung/groce
https://groce.de/de/

Kappelsberger et al. (2021) https://dx.doi.org/10.1029/2020JF005860
Hochreuther et al. (2021) https://doi.org/10.3390/rs13020205