Meteorological stations & model experiments

Three main data sources are used for subproject 8: near surface meteorological observations and a climate modelling system involving both atmospheric and surface mass balance models. Observations from 2 automatic weather stations located on the floating tongue of the glacier, and another 2 stations further inland on the glacier are used. This provides us with near-surface conditions from 1996-1999 (on the tongue) and from 2008-present further inland. The observations are provided by the Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland (GEUS). The Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) model is used with a high-resolution set up over 79N glacier. Sensitivity studies are used to identify the optimal set up in terms of physics options, domain locations and vertical resolution. The WRF model is ran for several years, covering the most recent period to identify modern-day near-surface conditions. The surface mass balance model is utilised both in offline mode and interactively within WRF to calculate the surface melting of the glacier, and to investigate the interactions between atmospheric processes and the response of the glacier.