Summer 2019 on Baby Glacier with Wolf Peak in the background. Back, left to right: Jeremiah Lee, Braden Smeda, Tim Hill. Front: Laura Thomson, Dorota Medryzcka.

Another successful field season on Axel Heiberg Island! Warm and sunny weather made for excellent working conditions for our team of five, however, the high levels of melt suggest another record negative mass balance year for the glaciers of Expedition Fiord.

Helicopter support allowed us to conduct work on Good Friday Bay Glacier (for Dorota Medrzycka), Baby Glacier (for Braden Smeda), and Thompson Glacier (where we installed a new dGPS station for a future student). New investigations along the White Glacier terminus involved installing a pressure transducer in a moulin to study subglacial water pressures (Tim Hill) and the subsequent impact on ice flow dynamics and the formation surface structures (Jeremiah Lee).

Thank you everyone for a great and productive summer! A special thanks to the team at the Polar Continental Shelf Program (PCSP) for stellar in-kind logistics support, and to ArcticNet, the New Frontiers – Explore grant, and the NSERC Discovery & Northern Research Supplement programs for funding this research!

 

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