Why the happy smile, and what’s that thing taking a tumble down the ice? The explanation can be found in this “postcard” from Qamanaarsuup Sermia, Nuuk Fjord.📮👇   ✍

“Our automatic weather station (AWS) on the lower part of Qamanaarsuup Sermia, a glacier at the head of Nuup Kangerlua (Nuuk Fjord) in southwest Greenland, had been standing since 2007 and, over time, had gradually travelled downglacier on the ice surface. As crevasses opened, seracs formed between them, and ice melt slowly narrowed the serac on which the station stood. By June 2025, the serac could no longer support the AWS, and it toppled into a crevasse.  

We were very lucky when we visited that month: one of the tripod legs was still frozen into the ice, preventing the AWS from falling into the water below. This allowed us to recover the station – and to install a new AWS further upglacier, ensuring the continuation of our long record of climate and glacier observations, including air temperature, pressure, precipitation, ice temperature, and ice surface height change.”   Hence the smile of relief from sender of the postcard, #PenelopeHow.   This story offers a little peek into our researchers’ work under #PROMICE (Programme for Monitoring of the Greenland Ice Sheet) and #GCNet (Greenland Climate Network). Together, the two monitoring programmes deliver near real-time data on the mass balance of the Greenland Ice Sheet. ❄️📈📉   ➡️ https://promice.org/   The story also highlights that keeping the Greenland Ice Sheet wired with real-time data doesn’t happen by itself. Every year, researchers must dig out, repair, and upgrade weather stations that can be ripped apart by hurricane-force winds or half-buried by snow. The field teams must restore or replace some of them, ensuring that the data stream that are vital for ice and climate modelling continues. ❄️🌬️🔧 Without this relentless maintenance, we would simply lose the foundation for understanding how the Arctic is changing.   Since 2007, PROMICE has provided a continuous record of surface melt, ice flow, and mass loss across Greenland. GC-Net, established in 1995, complements this work by monitoring snowfall and climate conditions higher up in the accumulation zone.   The two Danish-led networks are operated by our Department of Glaciology and Climate - GEUS in collaboration with DTU Space and Asiaq - Misissueqqaarnerit - Grønlands Forundersøgelser and deliver one of the world’s most comprehensive climate and glacier observation systems.    The toppled station is more than a dramatic field story - it illustrates the living, shifting nature of the ice sheet itself. It is a reminder of why long-term, consistent monitoring is essential to understand Greenland’s role in global sea-level rise and climate feedback. 📈🌊📉     📸1: Happy Penelope How 📸2-3: Toppled AWS 📸4: New AWS further upglacier (credit: Mads Christian Lund)   #Greenland #ClimateScience #ArcticResearch #ClimateData #OpenData