Tarfala Research Station 110 Annual Report 1997–98 Per Klingbjer (Ed.) Department of Physical Geography Forskningsrapport Research Report No. 110 abcd Tarfala Research Station Annual Report 1997–98 Per Klingbjer (Ed.) Forskningsrapport 110 Department of Physical Geography Research Report No. 110 abcd Tarfala Research Station Annual Report, 1997-98 Per Klingbjer (ed.) ISSN 1403-9788 The editor and the Department of Physical Geography at Stockhom University Cover figure. Pårteglaciären in Sarek national park (Photo: Per Klingbjer) Printed in Sweden Stockholm, 1999 Högskoletryckeriet, KTH Mailing adress: Visiting adress: Telephone: Department of Physical geography Svante Arrhenius väg 8 +46 8 162000 Stockholm University Fax: SE-106 91 Stockholm +46 8 164818 SWEDEN Tarfala Research Station Annual Report 1997–98 Contents Introduction 5 Tarfala Research Station 6 Massbalance of Storglaciären 1997/98 7-10 Mass balance of Mårmaglaciären 1997/98 11-12 Mass balance of Rabots Glaciär, a summary of three years 1995/96, 1996/97 and 1997/98 13-16 Hydrological measurements in the Tarfala drainage basin 1996-98 17-19 Tracer experiment on the water drainage in the accumulation area of Storglaciären 20-22 The mapping of Pårteglaciären and the analysis of its changes from 1963-1996 23-25 Glacio-meteorological investigations on Storglaciären 26 Abstract from the Tarfala student course papers 1998 27-28 Workshop on methods of mass balance measurements and modelling, Tarfala, Sweden. August 10-12, 1998 29-33 Litterature concerning the Tarfala valley and its close surroundings 34-43 Boende på Tarfala forskningsstation under 1998 44-45 Appendix 1. Snow depht survey - May 1998 and winter balance map 1997/98 46 Appendix 2. Stake locations 1998 and summer balance map 1997/98 47 Appendix 3. Stage discharge relationship at Rännan 1986-1997 48 Appendix 4. Stage discharge relationship at Lillsjön 1993-1997 48 Appendix 5. Mean daily discharge at Rännan 1997 49 Appendix 6. Mean daily discharge at Rännan 1998 50 Tarfala Research Station Annual Report 1997–98 Introduction This year was dominated by the SWEDARP 97/98 the same time data on glacier geology from Scan- expedition, the extensive mass balance programme, dinavia is most useful in interpreting the Antarctic and two conferences to a great extent organised subglacial landscape. by Tarfala staff. It was also the first year when Our experience of the CIRC programme in- MRI-CIRC was fully operational with glacial mete- cludes both positive and negative experiences. The orology, remote sensing and ice coring on the pro- good thing is the potential for future developments gramme. and synergic projects. The rather negative experi- There is a close link between the Antarctic stud- ence was the found that the CIRC programme de- ies and the field work carried out at Tarfala. Meth- veloped in a slight different direction than was ods in mass balance measurements and technical originally planned. The new direction is probably instruments used by us in Antarctica are to a large good for the scientific programme but lead by ne- extent developed and refined at Tarfala. And the cessity to some rather thorough adjustments in the projects associated with Tarfala all benefit from future organisation and use of technical assistance. the support given by the Antarctic programmes. In mid August we hosted a glacier mass bal- Large international programmes like ESF-EPICA ance workshop at Tarfala Research Station. It was and SCAR-ITASE have impacts on glaciology pro- a very successful meeting which will be presented grammes also in northern Sweden. This attracts in the last 1999 issue of Geografiska Annaler. Dur- students and researchers to get involved in glacio- ing the second half of August we organised a IGS- logical tasks, and financial support for investments symposium on the interaction between ice sheets useful also in the north. At the same time the inter- and landscape. The aim of that meeting was to national Antarctic programmes force us to ap- bridge over between theoretical modellers and gla- proach more global problems in our research giv- cial geologists. Though unlucky with the weather ing obvious synergy effects. it was very successful and the proceedings will be The Antarctic programmes are also important published in Annals of Glaciology no. 28. for our studies of past ice sheets over Scandinavia. This year mass balance was measured at 7 glaciers, Radar studies of landforms beneath the present of which 3 are presented in this report. We had one Antarctic Ice Sheet provide us with a unique ana- PhD defence, Jens-Ove Näslund, and one Fil. Lic, logue to former ice age conditions in the past. At Thomas Schneider. It was a very productive year. May 1998 Per Holmlund Professor 5 Tarfala Research Station Annual Report 1997–98 Tarfala Research Station Founded 1946 The Field Station Location: The station is located in the Tarfala Valley, 67°55’N 18°36’E, at 1130ma.s.l. in the Kebnekaise mountains, Swedish Lappland. The valley is surrounded by glaciers and 2000m peaks. Tarfala can be reached by foot (25km hike) or by helicopter from the nearest village, Nikkaluokta. Public transporta- tion is available to Nikkaluokta. Environment: Arctic alpine environment. The tree line (birch) is at ~700ma.s.l. in the area. Several glaciers in the valley terminate below 1200ma.s.l. Mean annual temperature is –4°C, resulting in wide- spread permafrost conditions. Availability: The station is open during the summer season: June–September. Summer bookings must be made before May 1. Restricted availability during winter, contact the station director for details. Station adress: (summer only) Tarfala Research Station c/o Kebnekaise Turiststation S-981 29 Kiruna, Sweden Tel. +46 980 55039 Fax. +46 980 55043 Field Station Management Director: Logistics: Professor Per Holmlund Mats Nilsson Department of Physical Geography Krister Jonsson (until May 31, 1999) Stockholm University Climate Impact Research Centre - Environment S-106 91 Stockholm and Space Research Institute (CIRC - MRI) Sweden Björkplan 6a Tel. +46 8 164811 S-981 42 Kiruna Fax. +46 8 164818 Sweden E-mail. [email protected] Tel. +46 980 826 80 (voice) Fax. +46 980 826 96 (fax) Researcher: Mobile. +46 010 2575272 (Mats) PhD, Research Associate Peter Jansson E-mail. [email protected] Department of Physical Geography Stockholm University S-106 91 Stockholm Sweden Tel. +46 8 164815 Fax. +46 8 164818 E-mail. [email protected] 6 Tarfala Research Station Annual Report 1997–98 Mass Balance of Storglaciären 1997/98 Peter Jansson Department of Physical Geography, Stockholm University, S-106 91 Stockholm Abstract. The mass balance record for Storglaciären now comprises 53 years. The winter balance was 1.35 m w.eq., the summer balance was 1.87 m w.eq., yielding a net balance of –0.52 m w.eq. This was the third consecutive year with a negative mass balance. This trend seems consistent with the longer-term cyclicity observable in the mass balance record. The winter balance was surveyed between April The conversion of snow depths, dsnow, into wa- 24 and May 15, 1998, by Regine Hock (MRI- ter equivalent values , dw.eq, was done by determin- CIRC), Mart Nyman, Constanze Weyhenmeyer ing an empirical relationship between the two. The (University of Bern), Mats Nilsson, Krister Jonsson, data from the density pits and core were plotted as and the author. Snow depth was determined at 287 cumulative water equivalent vs. cumulative snow points by manual probing (Appendix 1). During depth. A second degree polynomial was fit to the the same period, snow density was measured in data (which is nearly linear) yielding dw.eq. = 2 2 four pits at stake locations 5, 10, 15, and 20; stand- 0.00028dsnow + 0.364dsnow - 0.944, R = 1.0. The ard since a few years back. A snow core was also snow depths recorded by probing was then con- extracted from the firn area at stake location 29. verted using this relationship. The resulting grid of The density profiles from these measurements are water equivalent values was then converted into a seen in figures 1–5. Table 1 shows average densi- contour map (Appendix 2) through kriging inter- ties from all measurements. For stake locations see polation using the Golden Software Surfer soft- Appendix 2. At the time of snow density measure- ware. The total accumulation during the winter ments, the snow temperature was well below freez- 1997/98 was 1.35 m w.eq. (figure 6; table 2). ing throughout the snow pack. These conditions During the spring several new ablation stakes prevailed throughout the measurement. were established to improve on the existing abla- 0 0 Stake 5 Stake 10 100 100 200 200 Depth below surface (cm) surface below Depth 300 (cm) surface below Depth 300 0.0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.0 0.2 0.4 0.6 Density (g/cm 3) Density (g/cm 3) Figure 1. Snow density at stake location 5, Storglaciären, Figure 2. Snow density at stake location 10, May 1998 Storglaciären, May 1998 7 Tarfala Research Station Annual Report 1997–98 0 0 Stake 15 Stake 20 100 100 200 200 Depth below surface (cm) surface below Depth 300 (cm) surface below Depth 300 0.0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.0 0.2 0.4 0.6 Density (g/cm 3) Density (g/cm 3) Figure 3. Snow density at stake location 15, Figure 4. Snow density at stake location 20, Storglaciären, May 1998 Storglaciären, May 1998 0 Table 1. Snow densities at the time of the accumula- tion survey, May 1998 and at the end of the melt Stake 29 season in September 1998. Stake locations are given 100 in Appendix 3. 200 Stake location Snow depth (cm) Density (g/cm3) 300 5 147 0.39 10 125 0.41 15 133.5 0.40 400 20 220 0.42 29 391 0.47 Depth below surface (cm) surface below Depth 500 0.0 0.2 0.4 0.6 Density (g/cm 3) tion gradient I arrive at a summer balance of 1.74 Figure 5.