Researchers led by U of M prof reach milestone studying Greenland ice

A team of researchers led by a University of Manitoba professor is celebrating a significant milestone in a seven-year scientific quest in Greenland.

A team of researchers led by a University of Manitoba professor is celebrating a significant milestone in a seven-year scientific quest in Greenland.

Dorthe Dahl-Jensen, who is also a prof at the University of Copenhagen in Denmark, leads the team that successfully drilled through 2,670 metres of ice on the North Greenland Ice Stream, hitting bedrock. It’s a first for ice core researchers, and could be crucial to helping predict sea level rise in future.

Dahl-Jensen told Global Winnipeg the project, which involves researchers from 12 countries, has been long in the works — especially due to two years off during the COVID-19 pandemic — but is worth it for the knowledge scientists will be able to glean from the site.

“The findings are fabulous,” she said.

“It’s the first ice core that’s been drilled through an ice stream — and an ice stream is something very special, it’s kind of a stream of ice that flows like a river from the centre out toward the margins, where its discharge ice is calving icebergs into the ocean.

“This ice is moving much faster than the surrounding ice, and in this way, it’s contributing a lot to the mass loss of the Greenland Ice Sheet and thereby the sea level rise by discharging all of this ice into the ocean.”

Dahl-Jensen said it was known that the surface of the ice was moving at 58 metres per year, but it wasn’t previously known how fast the bedrock was moving.