TY - JOUR
T1 - Initial field activities of the Camp Century Climate Monitoring Programme in Greenland
AU - Colgan, William
AU - Pedersen, Allan
AU - Binder, Daniel
AU - Machguth, Horst
AU - Abermann, Jakob
AU - Jayred, Mike
N1 - Funding Information:
The Camp Century Climate Monitoring Programme is jointly funded by GEUS and the Danish Cooperation for Environment in the Arctic (DAN-CEA) within the Danish Ministry for Energy, Utilities and Climate. J.A. was supported by the Greenlandic Ministry of Independence, Foreign Affairs and Agriculture. The 2017 field team (W.C., A.P., D.B., H.M., J.A. and M.J.) warmly thank Danish liaison officers Kim Marchuard Mik-kelsen and Jens Alsing for logistical assistance at Thule Air Base.
Funding Information:
The Camp Century Climate Monitoring Programme is jointly funded by GEUS and the Danish Cooperation for Environment in the Arctic (DANCEA) within the Danish Ministry for Energy, Utilities and Climate. J.A. was supported by the Greenlandic Ministry of Independence, Foreign Affairs and Agriculture. The 2017 field team (W.C., A.P., D.B., H.M., J.A. and M.J.) warmly thank Danish liaison officers Kim Marchuard Mikkelsen and Jens Alsing for logistical assistance at Thule Air Base.
PY - 2018/8/15
Y1 - 2018/8/15
N2 - Camp Century was a military base constructed by the US Army Corps of
Engineers in 1959 in the near-surface layers of the Greenland ice sheet
at 77.13°N, 61.03°W and 1886 m above sea level (Clark 1965; Fig. 1). The
base housed up to 200 military personel and was continuously occupied
until 1964. After three years of additional seasonal operation, the base
was abandoned with minimal decommissioning in 1967. Recent Danish
scholarship has documented the political and military history of Camp
Century in detail (Nielsen & Nielsen 2016). In 2016, the Geological
Survey of Denmark and Greenland (GEUS) participated in a multi-nation
study that presented regional climate simulations that suggested the
icesheet surface mass balance at Camp Century may change from net
accumulation to net ablation by 2100 under the UN Intergovernmental
Panel on Climate Change RCP8.5 ‘business-as-usual’ climate scenario.
However, according to Colgan et al. (2016), net accumulation
would persist beyond 2100 at Camp Century under the climate-change
mitigation characterised by RCP4.5, an approximately ‘Paris Agreement’
climate scenario. In 2017, in response to concerns from the Government
of Greenland over the potential to remobilisation of contaminants from
Camp Century within the next century, the Government of Denmark
established a programme for long-term climate monitoring and detailed
one-time surveying of the debris field at Camp Century (Colgan et al.
2017). This report describes the initial field activities of the Camp
Century Climate Monitoring Programme in the context of the four
programme goals: 1. To continuously monitor relevant climate variables,
including the depth to which meltwater percolates, at the Camp Century
site. 2. To regularly update annual likelihoods of meltwater interacting
with abandoned materials at the Camp Century site over the next
century. 3. To map the estimated spatial extent and vertical depth of
abandoned wastes across the Camp Century site. 4. To publicly report all
findings from the Camp Century Climate Monitoring Programme in a timely
manner.
AB - Camp Century was a military base constructed by the US Army Corps of
Engineers in 1959 in the near-surface layers of the Greenland ice sheet
at 77.13°N, 61.03°W and 1886 m above sea level (Clark 1965; Fig. 1). The
base housed up to 200 military personel and was continuously occupied
until 1964. After three years of additional seasonal operation, the base
was abandoned with minimal decommissioning in 1967. Recent Danish
scholarship has documented the political and military history of Camp
Century in detail (Nielsen & Nielsen 2016). In 2016, the Geological
Survey of Denmark and Greenland (GEUS) participated in a multi-nation
study that presented regional climate simulations that suggested the
icesheet surface mass balance at Camp Century may change from net
accumulation to net ablation by 2100 under the UN Intergovernmental
Panel on Climate Change RCP8.5 ‘business-as-usual’ climate scenario.
However, according to Colgan et al. (2016), net accumulation
would persist beyond 2100 at Camp Century under the climate-change
mitigation characterised by RCP4.5, an approximately ‘Paris Agreement’
climate scenario. In 2017, in response to concerns from the Government
of Greenland over the potential to remobilisation of contaminants from
Camp Century within the next century, the Government of Denmark
established a programme for long-term climate monitoring and detailed
one-time surveying of the debris field at Camp Century (Colgan et al.
2017). This report describes the initial field activities of the Camp
Century Climate Monitoring Programme in the context of the four
programme goals: 1. To continuously monitor relevant climate variables,
including the depth to which meltwater percolates, at the Camp Century
site. 2. To regularly update annual likelihoods of meltwater interacting
with abandoned materials at the Camp Century site over the next
century. 3. To map the estimated spatial extent and vertical depth of
abandoned wastes across the Camp Century site. 4. To publicly report all
findings from the Camp Century Climate Monitoring Programme in a timely
manner.
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85062786894&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.34194/geusb.v41.4347
DO - 10.34194/geusb.v41.4347
M3 - Article
VL - 41
SP - 75
EP - 78
JO - Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland Bulletin
JF - Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland Bulletin
SN - 1604-8156
ER -