tasks

Task 1: Modelling of targeted intervention for protecting the Jakobshavn Glacier

In the 1st stage, a community workshop is organized, where the concept and modelling of ice sheet conservation for protecting the Jakobshavn Glacier are presented and locals’ views, concerns, and questions on climate change’s impacts and ice sheet conservation are collected in focus group discussions. Additional interviews are conducted on the impacts on local and national levels, and the youth art competition is launched. Based on the community focus group discussions.

Preliminary ice/ocean modelling of impact of a sea bed anchored curtain with a top height 100 m below the surface. The ocean forcing here is idealized due to relatively lack of winter observations. We estimate that about a 45% reduction in basal melting of Jakobshavn would result.

See modelling images at the bottom of the page.

Task 1 team: John Moore, U. Lapland; Aslak Grinsted, U. Copenhagen; M. Wolovick, AWI; Liyun Zhao Beijing Normal University.

Photo on the banner: Ilussia by Ilona Mettiäinen

Task 2: Community involvement in co-production of knowledge and in the identification of social, cultural, economic and ecological impacts

The project will organize community workshops for the focus groups of local stakeholders concerning applicability of seabed anchored curtains or other interventions. The community workshops will be organized in the 1st stage of the project for knowledge co-production with the locals, and in the 3rd phase for sharing the outcomes of the modelling. Based on the assessments of the effects of ice sheet conservation on the natural environment, the discussions will raise questions related to potential effects on the livelihood, ways of life, cultural issues, multiple-use, and recreational possibilities of local people. Furthermore, the discussions assess the distribution of pros and cons between locals near the Jakobshavn Glacier and Greenland in general as well as ways of minimizing the negative impacts. As a possible monetization and governance approach, ice sheet conservation could offer a new, alternative and sustainable source of income for Greenlanders if compensation for it was offered following the principle of PES (Wunder, 2007). An idea behind this approach is to use economic incentives for resource owners or other operators to help in environmental protection or the production of ecosystem services.

Task 2 team: Rasmus Leander Nielsen, U. Greenland; Ilona Mettiäinen and Timo Koivurova, U. Lapland

Task 3: Imagining new futures by co-produced knowledge and art

Greenlandic youth are invited to illustrate their concerns and wishes on the new climatic futures by the means of art. The techniques include photography, video, installations, paintings, drawings and sculptures. An exhibition will be produced based on WP5, and it will be displayed in Ilulissat and Nuuk in Greenland and at the Arktikum Science Centre in Rovaniemi, Finland. More venues will be contacted, with the potential of an international exhibition tour in mind.

Tasks 1 and 2 will be integrated together to produce a set of alternative interventions (possibly ranging from none at all) and ice sheet conservation strategies in the second round of focus groups and illustrated as part of the exhibition.

Exhibition team: Nicolas Gunslay + whole GRISCO team.

Click images to see them full size!

Modeled profiles of A) January velocity and B) January surface elevation along the center flow line (dashed purple line in C) of Jakobshavn Isbræ from 2004 to 2099 for the RCP4.5 scenario. Bedrock elevation is shown in black. The dotted black line is the surface elevation profile extracted from radar data measured around 2010 (Gogineni et al., 2012). Profiles are shown at intervals of 1 year. Profiles are color coded in the legend and range from blue to green and red. C) Modeled July front positions (color bar) over its bedrock (grayscale bar) at intervals of 2 years.

A) Greenland ice sheet flow speeds from Joughin et al. (2018), with the Jakobshavn drainage basin outlined by the solid black line and the area shown in B) by the dashed box. (b) Ilulissat Fjord and Disko Bay bathymetry from Jakobsson et al. (2012), with the CTD (conductivity temperature depth) site used for ocean temperature marked by the red star. C) Example of the mesh used with finest resolution of 500 m with modeled velocities at the beginning of 2004.

Source: Simulated retreat of Jakobshavn Isbræ during the 21st century. Xiaoran Guo, Liyun Zhao, Rupert M. Gladston2, Sainan Sun, and John C. Moore. The Cryosphere, The Cryosphere, 13, 3139–3153, 2019. https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-13-3139-2019.