Wrapping Greenland Dummies' Guide

Dr. Jason Box, a glaciologist from Ohio State University, is on a mission to prevent glaciers from melting by covering them with blankets that will reflect the powerful rays of the sun. This experiment takes existing technology used in the Alps, and scales it up, bringing it for the first time ever to the rapidly melting Arctic ice shelf in Greenland.

Main Experiment

Dr. Box and the Discovery Task Force will be airlifted to a remote glacier, 90 kilometers east of Kangerlussuaq, Greenland. The bulk of their cargo is 31 giant rolls of uniquely designed white polypropylene blankets.  These blankets will cover a total surface area of 10,000 square meters, and are designed to reflect sunlight and block out Greenland’s immense winds. 

Polypropylene blankets are used in the Alps to preserve rapidly disappearing ski hills over hot summers. For the Greenland project, the team hopes to conserve ice approximately 2 meters deep. In particular, the team will blanket over a moulin – a glacial "well" that carries meltwater from the surface to the base of the ice.  The team will work with five Arctic experts from the Byrd Polar Research Center, who will use state-of-the-art equipment and cameras to gather meteorological, melt-rate and energy-budget data. 

For the first time ever, the team will also study the massive melt lakes of water appearing all over the Arctic.  With cameras primed around the edges, scientists will capture never-before-seen footage and invaluable data of a melt lake dramatically and unexpectedly draining in a matter of hours, sending tens of thousands of cubic meters of water beneath the glacier. 

The team will lay the blankets down, attach them together, tether the edges to the ice, and set up all the scientific monitoring equipment during the first week of July. One of the scientists will remain at the camp for the whole summer to gather the data and maintain the blankets. The team will return Aug. 25th to collect the dramatic results. 

Supplemental Experiment

The team will go to Alaska to test different blanket materials under Arctic conditions. In a gravel pit near Anchorage, scientists will use two bulldozers to pull a 5-meter by 5-meter sample of the Greenland blanket horizontally taut. 

From above, a wind machine will blast hurricane-force winds.  A snow blower will dump a truckload of snow in its path, and the blanket will be tested under blizzard conditions.

Chunks of ice will then be maneuvered into the path of the wind machine via conveyor belts, and an ice storm will be launched on the blanket. 

The experiment will then be repeated with a natural, organic-fiber "hemp."  Since hemp isn't manufactured in 5-meter square sections, 48-inch x 5-meter sections will be sewn together by hand.

In Greenland, the team will conduct some tests on a boat in the melt lake and down inside the moulin.  These tests involve gathering data on the rate of melting ice.

The Background

The science behind using the blankets to preserve sections of melting glaciers was developed by universities in Europe. There are projects running at the University of Innsbruck and the University of Zurich in Switzerland. German scientists ran a limited version of the project on the Zugspitze glacier in 2005, but they used tarpaulin, which demonstrated how the idea works in principal but didn't result in any real knowledge.

The science of blankets reflecting sunlight and preserving the ice below has been in development for several years.  Our scientists focused their attention on the work done by the University of Innsbruck, where they have been developing an environmentally friendly reflective material. This material does not allow chemicals to leach into the ice and is permeable in order not to genetically alter or kill microbes within the ice.

The University of Innsbruck has not been working on this project as a method to save the planet from global warming.  They were commissioned by ski resorts to preserve the infrastructure of the resorts.  Due to the rapidly melting Alpine glaciers, ski lifts are collapsing. Without this infrastructure in place, the local economy also collapses.