Expressions of Intent for International Polar Year 2007-2008 Activities

Expression of Interest Details

PROPOSAL INFORMATION

Ice sheet/atmosphere exchange at Summit, Greenland  (ISUX)

Outline
The dry snow zone of an ice sheet holds a key for its stability. Summit, Greenland is located in the middle of the dry snow zone, offering also an ideal site for the boundary layer investigation in the polar atmosphere. Based on the past five year experiments at this location, it is proposed to investigate the exchange processes on the ice sheet with a three dimensional observation network on a horizontal and homogenous surface of a great extent with a quasi-infinitely large fetch.: 1) Radiation will be continuously measured in accordance with the Baseline Surface Radiation Network (World Climate Research Program) methods; 2) Turbulent fluxes and the wind, temperature and humidity profiles will be continuously measured on a 50 m tower; 3) Around the main tower, there will be a network of 6 towers (fluxes, wind, temperature humidity and precision micro-barometry), observing large-scale eddies and internal waves; 4) For supporting information, radiosounding, SODAR-operation and synoptic meteorological observations will be made; 5) Radiation and a possible convection will be observed within the snow cover. With the above instrumentation, it is aimed at 1) understanding the energy exchange processes to maintain the dry snow zone; 2) clarifying the processes of solar radiation absorption within the top layer of the ice sheet; 3) re-examination of the Monin-Obukhov hypothesis under a strong stability; 4) deriving a flux/gradient relationship by taking the radiation divergence into account and finally 5) examination of the relevance of the Obukhov length for strong stability and possibly generalising this concept into a strongly stable atmospheric boundary layer.

What significant advance(s) in relation to the IPY themes and targets can be anticipated from this project?
The existence of the dry snow zone is crucial for maintaining an ice sheets, hence slowing the sea level change. The proposed project will produce the basic information necessary to evaluate the consequence of climate changes, at the same time it addresses the key questions in the boundary layer at an ideal site for such experiments. The experiments planned during the IPY will pave a road to upgrade the current observations at Summit to a prospective International Summit Greenland Environmental Observatory (c.f. EoI by R. Bales). The proposal offers the basic information for understanding atmospheric chemistry, interpreting ice core analyses and improving ice sheet models for the sea-level estimation. If the long term future observatory is realised, such an organisation will become the only observational sites for monitoring a vast range of atmospheric characteristics far from strong sources.

What international collaboration is involved in this project?
The Summit projects encompassed so far collaborations among US, Danish, Swiss, French and German groups. It expects to be joined by UK in two years.

FIELD ACTIVITY DETAILS

Geographical location(s) for the proposed field activities:
The same site as GISP Summit at 72º 35' N, 38º 27' W, 3203 m a.s.l.

Approximate timeframe(s) for proposed field activities:
Arctic: April/2007 – August/2008            
Antarctic: n/a

Significant facilities will be required for this project:
For the period April to August monthly flight with C130 USAF with additional charters from Greenland Air. There is also a concrete plan to construct a street from Sondrestromfjord to Summit by Danish Polar Centre.

Will the project leave a legacy of infrastructure?
The site being located at high elevation, distant from major emission sources, industry, desert and ocean is ideal for long-term monitoring of air chemistry and radiation after the IPY. The site is an ideal natural wind tunnel for boundary layer studies. It is closer from major research centres in the Northern Hemisphere. This site and existing buildings can be made a permanent International Summit Greenland Environmental Observatory (c.f. EoI by R. Bales).

How is it envisaged that the required logistic support will be secured?
Consortium
National agency
Military support
Commercial operator
Own support

The above logistics apply for various levels of the entire logistic activities.

Has the project been "endorsed" at a national or international level?
The project is approved and supported by the Swiss IPY Committee as well as the Swiss Commission for Polar Research. This project has an endorsement from US NSF. The European groups are working together for last three years with a centre at the Danish Polar Centre.

PROJECT MANAGEMENT AND STRUCTURE

Is the project a short-term expansion (over the IPY 2007-2008 timeframe) of an existing plan, programme or initiative or is it a new autonomous proposal?


The Summit has been active for various projects since 1999. The IPY helps bring these projects into better co-ordination among on-going projects, and provides a chance for other groups to join.

How will the project be organised and managed?
The best is to form an International Steering Committee under which Logistics and Scientific Groups will co-ordinate activities. The station can be run with the front-high technology. It has already a clean air zone south from the Big House. In the future, the site can be made an "Emission Zero Observatory", by replacing the engines of conventional generators and vehicles with fuel cell engines, and filtering the outgoing air from the kitchen and buildings to trap aerosol.

What are the initial plans of the project for addressing the education, outreach and communication issues outlined in the Framework document?
The projects involved already many graduate and undergraduate students. Some projects actively took high school teachers to Summit. Some PIs visited high schools for the follow up. The station accommodated groups of journalists. This good tradition should be continued. The station has already an excellent communicational and computational facilities.

What are the initial plans of the project to address data management issues (as outlined in the Framework document?
Each project is responsible to clean, store and distribute data. The list of the obtained data must be centralised. The radiation data which are most standardised are sent to the World Radiation Monitoring Centre, and then further to World Radiation Data Centre (WMO).

How is it proposed to fund the project?
Swiss National Science Foundation and the research fund of my university, ETH.

Is there additional information you wish to provide?
The present proposal is concentrated for Summit. For evaluating the stability of the entire ice sheet, it is necessary to investigate lower regions of accumulation area and the entire ablation area for which a separate proposal is written. The present project is prepared also with co-ordination with this group. The applicant's group has one of the most advanced ice sheet dynamics madel already. The proposal is prepared under a full co-ordination with others for Summit, especially with Prof. Roger Bales.

PROPOSER DETAILS

Professor Atsumu Ohmura
Institute for Atmospheric and Climate Science, ETH Zurich
Winterthurerstrasse 190
CH-8057 Zurich
CH-8057
Switzerland

Tel: +41 1 635 5220
Mobile: +41 79 261 7785
Fax: +41 1 362 5197
Email:

Other project members and their affiliation