Collaborative Research: Greenland Dry-snow Ice-sheet Science Coordination Office

Summit Station in Greenland has been the research location for many National Science Foundation Office of Polar Programs (NSF-OPP) activities for over twenty years. The value of the facility is based on its location, well above the Arctic circle, high enough in elevation to be in the free troposphere, not influenced by human settlements or the moderating effects of the ocean, and the site of the Greenland Ice Sheet Project 2 (GISP2) deep ice core.

Summit Station (72oN, 38oW, 3250 m.a.s.l.) hosts the Greenland Environmental Observatory (GEOSummit), the only NSF site with permission from the Government of Greenland and the Danish Commission for Scientific Research in Greenland to provide long-term environmental measurements. Summit Station is staffed year-round and fills an important niche in the international scientific community’s global measurement capability.

The Science Coordination Office (SCO) for Summit Station represents research interests that utilize the station, providing regular feedback to the managers of the Arctic Research Support and Logistics Program (RSL) and conveying information back to the research community about NSFs plans for the station. The SCO presents the needs and desires of the science community working on the ice sheet in interior Greenland in discussions and decision making process between RSL and their primary logistics support contractor.

NSF has stated plans to recapitalize the infrastructure at Summit Station over the next 8-years and the SCO will ensure there is communication with the research community throughout the planning and design process. The SCO concurs with NSF’s goals to make a safe and sustainable Summit Station elevated above the drifting snow and preserving the clean air and clean snow research areas. The GEOSummit website has resources for new Principal Investigators, students and educators.

Summit Station, Greeland is the site of decades of study of the past climate through deep ice cores, and studies of atmospheric chemistry, snow processes and, more recently, the study of high-energy neutrinos from the origins of the universe. Through this effort, the SCO will ensure that plans to operate and in coming years to recapitalize the infrastructure at Summit Station will be done with the interests of the research community.

The SCO meets weekly with the arctic logistics contractor science support, logistics and operations at Summit Station to remain informed about plans and communicate research interests. The SCO is invited to review documents and provide input on plans for Summit Station. The Radio Neutrino Observatory for Greenland (RNO-G) project has installed 6 detector nodes of a planned 30-node network.

SCO will continue to advocate for Summit Station site plans that accommodate an influx of astrophysical research while maintaining long standing focus on climate relevant research which needs clean air and snow conditions. This plan will also welcome and support researchers from a range of other disciplines, and will include opportunities to educate students and new researchers, but must keep everyone from inadvertently interfering with each other.

The SCO website is a keystone of communication to the science community, with several features added over the past few years such as the Google Earth based GIS -- recording activity in the region over the past 12-years -- a virtual tour using Streetview images, a new Working at Summit section targeting new investigators, a comprehensive bibliography of published work near Summit, and a quarterly Newsletter.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.