Thawing Mountains

The first study to focus on the degradation of mountain permafrost in Greenland, which can have far reaching impacts on landslide geohazards and the evolution of the landscape.
Borrowing expertise from the Alps and Scandinavia, we work on combining time lapse geophysical surveys of active layer and permafrost distribution at depth, surface climate, borehole temperatures, snow cover, rock mass and joints properties, and a map of historical and recently active slope morphologies over two pilot areas: Vaigat and Sisimiut. The field results will be used to extend, calibrate and validate the regional climate model downscaling and subsurface temperatures code recently developed for the GEUS landslides project, adding spatially varying snow cover and a physical scheme for subsurface heat propagation. By the end of the project, we will have a first indication of the state of mountain permafrost in Greenland and whether the establishment of a long term monitoring of mountain permafrost appears necessary and feasible.