How Greenland melts: analysis and applications of high fidelity observations of the coupled climate system from an autonomous, renewable-powered, realtime research platform

Michael Gallagher

CIRES - NOAA Physical Sciences Laboratory

Tuesday, Sep 10, 2024, 2:00 pm MT
DSRC Room GC402

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Abstract

During Summer 2024 the ICECAPS research team, with a significant NOAA Physical Sciences Laboratory (PSL) contingent, constructed a large renewable-powered autonomous research platform prototype at Camp Raven in the percolation zone of the Greenland ice sheet. The platform was instrumented with more than 50 sensors to comprehensively measure processes impacting the near-surface firn, to create a holistic understanding of energy budget and mass balance in this critical zone. The platform included complex instruments such as ground penetrating radar, depolarization cloud lidar, precipitation radar, and microwave radiometers as well as the complete surface energy inputs from pyrgeometers, pyranometers, sonic anemometry, and more. These observations provide insight into the synergistic mechanisms that affect melt and refreeze via measurements of albedo, precipitation, cloud properties, percolation, snow characteristics, and firn evolution.

Understanding the relationships between these physical processes is critical for iterative evaluation of forecast models and eventually improved climate projections. At this seminar there will be an overview of the research platform observations, the renewable power system, the technical scope of the prototype, and a preliminary data analysis showing the temporal evolution of the coupled processes throughout the summer.

Bio: Michael Gallagher is a CIRES research scientist at PSL who works to improve in-situ climate observations for analysis and applications. In recent times he has worked in collaboration with other PSL researchers to refine a mobile research platform to make realtime autonomous observations of surface energy budget, turbulent exchange characteristics, precipitation, and cloud properties, as well as their connections to changes in the(sub)surface. These platforms have been deployed to locations across the globe, from the Arctic to the
SPLASH field site in Crested Butte Colorado. Michael is passionate about: reducing the cost and size of observation platforms; improving the quality of data products available for model evaluation and other applications; as well as new methodologies for analysis of observed physical processes.