Ice caps melting

A short post to highlight news that has emerged, indicating that the ice caps in the Canadian Arctic are melting at an accelerated rate since 2005 (see article in Vancouver Sun).  This information is something that has been well understood in the research community for years, but it is striking that the increased loss of ice from these ice caps, including the Melville Ice Cap (about 150 km west of Cape Bounty) coincides with a period of remarkable warming at Cape Bounty.  The warmest July at Cape Bounty was in 2007, followed closely by 2011 and 2012.  Interestingly, July 2013 was cooler at Cape Bounty and reflects a cooling also noted in the article and on the ice caps.

These ice caps vary in size and sensitivity to change, and there are researchers working to understand these changes, but the same recent climate has had an important impact on our research at Cape Bounty.  In particular, and the widespread permafrost disturbance that we observed occurred in late July 2007 and occurred at a time when temperatures were greater than 20degC on some days.

One of the most visible forms of permafrost disturbance at Cape Bounty are slope failures called active layer detachments, or ALD for short.  These slides can be very large, up to 600 m long and 200 m wide, and move down slope long distances.  They move like a carpet slowly sliding down a slope, a thin layer that keeps moving until some obstruction slows it down.  As it loses momentum, the moving soil piles up in folds and comes to rest.

ALD are a potential risk to roads and other infrastructure that might be built in this region, and they impact water quality by increasing sediment erosion and causing additional salts to be released.  Other impacts likely occur, particularly by the release of soil organic matter that was buried for thousands of years, and allowing soil and water microorganisms to consume this different material.  How this affects the soil and water ecosystem remains poorly understood and is one of the topics we are studying at Cape Bounty.

While it is difficult to determine trends, especially with so much year to year variation in weather, both the ice caps and permafrost are responding to recent warming in the Canadian Arctic.  From the perspective of Cape Bounty, even if this trend reverses itself, the impact will remain on the land and affect the water for many years to come.

Research infrastructure

Autumn is a time when we are hard at work analysing the data from the past field season.  We also have to start to plan for the next season with many applications for funding due in November and permits to renew. Plans for 2014 are coming along nicely and we expect to be at CBAWO for almost three months.

A big part of operating a long term research program is to carry out basic, systematic measurements that are needed for all kinds of work.  These include weather, river, soil and lake measurements and they are the cornerstone of our efforts at CBAWO.  In this region of the Arctic, there are no systematic river or lake measurements taken by government agencies, and the nearest weather station is 300 km away at Mould Bay, so we really need to have good quality data for our research.  

This map shows the current primary measurement network.  There are a number of weather, river and lake stations that have been in operation from the beginning in 2003, and some like the small streams and soil stations that have been added since that time.  There are many other locations not shown here that are sampled regularly but this network is the core of CBAWO.

In the last two years, we have added time lapse cameras to this basic network.  We have two located on a plateau edge to provide images of the ice cover on each lake.  This is very important for us as we are not usually there when the ice forms in autumn, and in some years (like 2013), the ice comes off the lakes after we leave as well.  The cameras perform well but can be buried by snow, so we miss much of the winter.

We installed a time lapse camera on the West River station in 2013 as well, looking down stream at the river and lake.  The goal of this is to provide some visual indication of what happens at the river in our absence.