Dr. Jacobel and Robert Engle taking data on Storglaciären.

One of our current projects is a hydrologic study of Storglaciären Glacier in collaboration with colleagues from Portland State University and the University of Stockholm.  Storglaciären is located in the Kebnekaise Massif region, the highest mountains in Sweden, and is a polythermal glacier with a cold surface layer overlying temperate ice at the pressure melting point.  It has the longest-running mass balance record of any glacier in the world and is perhaps the best studied.  Water produced by surface snow melt during the summer penetrates the cold ice layer and makes its way to the bed, providing lubrication that controls ice motion.  However, the process is poorly understood.

The goals of this project are to understand the processes whereby water is delivered from the ice surface through englacial conduits and channels to the bed.  To conduct our studies, we are using bore-hole video and a high-frequency ground-penetrating radar that depicts englacial water as bright regions of high echo strength.  The radar is used to survey the ice and to locate candidate features for drilling.  Boreholes are then drilled to examine the feature using a variety of down hole tools, including bore-hole video.  We have just completed the first year of three in the project; we will be returning next year to finish data collection and the data will be analyzed during the following year.  Here you can see a 50 MHz and 100 MHz radar profile, both of which were taken during the summer of 2001.  Our field operations are based at Tarfala Research Station, which is run by the University of Stockholm.  (Click here for maps of the glacier and Sweden).