Finding the background about remote places can be tricky...
... yet, it's something we often want to know. There are often places that are intriguing, but that have no handy signposts to tell you what's going on. What do you do when you want to find out about a place that's in the middle of nowhere?
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| What nowhere looks like. |
While looking around on Google Maps over Greenland one day I spotted a most remarkable thing. This is clearly next to nowhere, but it's big and complicated. Naturally, I was curious... so...
1. What is the story of this place? (It's 72.5787606,-38.4543542 )
2. What kind of organization would pay to put this thing here? Why?
3. What was the weather like on May 10, 2016? (And how cold would it have felt?)
4. (Extra credit) What's the most interesting story to come out of this place in the place year or so?
This isn't that hard to figure out, but it's a great chance to go exploring in a place that very, very few of us will ever visit. (Send me! Send me!)
Can you find the answers to this Challenge?
Be sure to tell us HOW you found out!
Search on!
My first search was "research outposts greenland", but this turned up very little that was helpful. I then tried "remotest station greenland" and started getting closer. Finally, I tried "list research station greenland", which returned a WikiPedia category of Research stations in Greenland (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Research_stations_in_Greenland). I just opened each of the pages and started looking to see which ones looked close.
ReplyDelete1. It's Summit Station at the peak of the Greenland Ice Cap. Coordinates are variable as the ice moves, but the main page for the station agrees pretty closely with those provided (http://www.summitcamp.org/).
2. It is sponsored by the National Science Foundation.
3. The high temperature on May 10, 2016 was about -15° C, winds about 30 knots out of the southwest. (http://www.summitcamp.org/status/weather/)
Good day, Dr. Russell and everyone.
ReplyDeleteSearched your coordinates in Google Maps and looked for images there.
1 of the photos
[arctic oven summit] in Images
Final Days at Summit Camp
The Big House serves as the station hub. Photos links to summit station
[summit station Greenland weather]
Summit, Greenland Observatory, NOAA
[Greenland summit station stories]
Answers
1. What is the story of this place? (It's 72.5787606,-38.4543542 )
Summit Station (72° 36′ North, 38° 25′ West), a research platform at the summit of the Greenland ice sheet, has been in operation since 1988. The National
Science Foundation funds and manages the station in cooperation with the Government of Greenland
2. What kind of organization would pay to put this thing here? Why?
National Science Foundation (NSF) and the Danish Commission for Scientific Research in Greenland to provide year-round, long-term measurements for monitoring and investigations of the Arctic environment...GEOSummit provides investigators ease of access to the highest site north of the Arctic Circle. Source NOAA link.
Summit-Isi is the only high altitude, high latitude, inland, year-round monitoring station in the Arctic
3. What was the weather like on May 10, 2016? (And how cold would it have felt?)
Wednesday:
Fair/cloudy with risk of drifting snow. temp. between -12 and -22 Degrees C
Weather Now feels like -20 C
4. (Extra credit) What's the most interesting story to come out of this place in the place year or so?
Not Yet. I don't understand what you are asking, Dr. Russell. Can you please share more information? Thanks
[summit station greenland unknown facts]
DeleteWikipedia article says: " Its coordinates are variable, since the ice is moving", is this real? After reading some of that must be true because in a link mentioned later, also mentions coordinates from 2009. I couldn't find information about this theory, but I think coordinates don't change so much. Of course, I can be so wrong.
PDF document: As the only
dedicated, staffed observatory operating year-round at high altitudes in the Arctic, Summit offers easy and immediate access to the free troposphere, is relatively free of local influences that could corrupt climatic records, traces averaged trends in the northern hemispheric troposphere, and captures rare phenomena that can represent climatic trends and help scientists understand the
impacts of climate change.
Summit Camp April 23
Summit Station Site Plan (January 2016)
[Greenland weather summit station nasa]
Winter Camp: A Blog from the Greenland Summit ...In Winter only two scientists stay to conduct their own research and to keep up the station’s year-round science observations and experiments....The Sun never gets far above the horizon during the Greenland winter...
Lora Koenig, blogging her experience
Summit Station Blog
As possible answer to q4, Science is done in the summer months in the camp and almost nothing in Winter
[Lora Koenig ] No much more information at the moment
The most recent news - found by using Google News and some of the terms others here suggested like Greenland summit camp - is that the Greenland ice sheet isn't shrinking. http://www.reportingclimatescience.com/2016/05/04/greenland/
ReplyDeleteMy results were the same as Matthew's, but I found it using image search.
ReplyDeleteWelcome to Summit Station, located at the peak of the Greenland ice cap at 72°35'46.4"N 38°25'19.1"W, 10,530 ft (mean sea level) elevation. Summit is a scientific research station sponsored by the National Science Foundation, operated by CH2M Hill Polar Services (CPS) with research guidance from the Summit Science Coordination Office.
Summit Station is the home of the Greenland Environmental Observatory (GEOSummit) where year-round monitoring of key climate variables are conducted to study air-snow interactions, knowledge of which is crucial for interpreting data from ice cores drilled in the area and elsewhere. Research building on the NSF investments during the International Polar Year (IPY) is particularly encouraged.
The station is located atop 3200 m of ice and is nearly 400 km from the nearest point of land. Summit supports a diversity of scientific research, including year-round measurements of air-snow interactions that provide crucial knowledge for interpreting data from deep ice cores drilled both at Summit and elsewhere.
Here is a link to their webcam: http://www.summitcamp.org/status/webcam/
A New York Times article: http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/11/26/world/climate-research-greenland-photos-videos-drone.html?_r=0http://www.geosummit.org/
The biggest news that I could find is an April heat wave: http://mashable.com/2016/04/13/greenland-record-early-melt/#qRi9EXX.vsqZ
Spent about 20 minutes on this. Your picture was a winter view.
…lost in the remote… different than losing the remote…
ReplyDeleteinitially, with your first photo, the image search suggested "nowhere" might be Los Angeles… but was skeptical of the hometown dis & dropped that notion…
L.A.
Ink from the sky
Kangerlussuaq – drop by for a coffee Point 660
Weather conditions range from - 88F in the winter to approximately 32F in the summer.…
looks chilly
"Summit Station, 10,530 feet above sea level on the Greenland ice sheet, is more than 260 miles from land." (nyt)
the news?
news - from 'news' on summit camp SERP…
drone, good images
Dan, maybe if you re-enroll in high school?
the "how to", courtesy of MS Word
an icy trailer house on stilts… where's the tornado?
an alternative… -77.963012, 166.524444
less hot air being free of the EU?
maybe you could join this outing…
on the east coast
Glacier Girl
wiki on GG
mute - Air Museum at San Martin
fogbow at Summit Station
ReplyDeleteChristopher Cox
2013
only eight times in the last 1,500 years
I just pasted the co-ordinates into GE and then found everything already mentioned by the usual routes. Would you wish to go there in winter or wait til summer and take your scuba gear ?
ReplyDeleteCheers
jon, who had never heard of this place before now
there it is, coming after Summit Station's "Big House" with a wayward puffin and rare Greenlandic Holstein in frame, as witnesses…
ReplyDeletethat kind of twister bait can't go un-noticed, even at altitude.
quite the weather event – no getting in the root cellar there. Didn't see a date on the photo… nowhere might be preferable to a Kalaallit Nunaat cyclone…
…when cows fly…
"Summit Camp consists of the Big House (main building), Greenhouse (research building) with attached Berthing Module, a combined garage and generator building, Swiss Tower, the summertime Tent City, and storage buildings"
snow pit
the NASA take
snow pit layers
Marco Tedesco in a pit
…what's worse than a twister in Greenland… one with sharks…
DeleteSharknado, Greenland style
Sharknado in two minutes
…now you don't have to see the movie… while you are snowed in at the Big House… watch at your own risk…
but if you do, the chainsaw will make perfect sense… kinda.
what's good in Iceland is probably "good" in Greenland too… after all, it is often their sharks…
Hákarl
G'land shark
sleeper family
the sharks diet
"And something worth noting — they have often been found to have the remnants of polar bears, horses, and reindeer in their stomachs, after being caught. An individual was once caught which had a completely-intact reindeer, antlers and all, inside its belly."
"Chef Anthony Bourdain described kæstan hákarl as "the single worst, most disgusting and terrible tasting thing" he has ever eaten." wha, what?
Asking what the temperature was on a specific date was a big clue, I googled [map weather stations greenland] and then compared the first map I found to the coordinates that you gave... and the rest flowed from there.
ReplyDelete1. My search was surprisingly simple yet effective. Looked at the image via maps and saw that it was quite literally in the middle of nowhere. I did notice, however, what looked to be an airstrip, so my search was [greenland center airstrip]
ReplyDeleteFirst hit was via reddit with the title "An airstrip and assorted junk near the dead center of the Greenland ice sheet" Well shoot, that is exactly what I am looking at in the image. Within the post, there were two links to information: Summit Camp research station and a link to the Wiki page. Reading through confirmed that this was the same place. Plus, on the official page the coordinates are listed as: 72°35'46.4"N 38°25'19.1"W which is close to yours. Since the camp is on an ice sheet, it is on the move.
2. The official site answers this: Summit is a scientific research station sponsored by the National Science Foundation, operated by CH2M Hill Polar Services (CPS) with research guidance from the Summit Science Coordination Office. Why? For year-round monitoring of key climate variables are conducted to study air-snow interactions, knowledge of which is crucial for interpreting data from ice cores drilled in the area and elsewhere.
3. Weather data is kept here. On May 10, the temperature looks to have dipped to approximately -12C which is downright balmy for the time of year. To figure out how cold it felt (VERY), I figured wind chill would need to be calculated. Found a tool (http://www.srh.noaa.gov/epz/?n=wxcalc_windchill) that allowed me to do that. Approximate speed of wind was 30knots, entered into the calculator and the wind chill appears to be about -25C. Brrrrrrrr!
4. Define interesting :) The fact that this place exists is interesting to me. I did a search for [summit station greenland], limited it to 2014 (the "or so" in a year or so) and looked at news. Most of the stories are interesting. I liked the one that discusses acid rain and the US Clean Air Act (http://www.washington.edu/news/2014/04/11/greenland-ice-cores-show-industrial-record-of-acid-rain-success-of-u-s-clean-air-act/).
Deb and Anne here! Hopefully we are back for good! We put the coordinates into google maps and discovered this site is in the middle of Greenland. Next we did a search on Google for research facilities in Greenland. The first hit was for the Earth System Research lab (ESRL) Summit, Greenland Observatory. The website listed the coordinates and they matched.
ReplyDelete"The Greenland Environmental Observatory (GEOSummit) on the summit of the Greenland Ice Sheet (3200 m above sea level) was established by the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) and the Danish Commission for Scientific Research in Greenland to provide year-round, long-term measurements for monitoring and investigations of the Arctic environment."
Next we used the same site as many other people did to find the weather http://www.summitcamp.org/status/weather/ It gave the current days (May 12) weather. It appeared from charts on this page that the weather on the 12th was very similar to the 10th so the temperature appears to be about -10 C. The 12th doesn't appear to be as windy. Then tried weather underground and they had historical data. They reported temps on th 10th at Summit, Greenland to be a high of 13 degrees F and a low of -16F with winds of 25 mph.
To find the answer to the last question used google news and typed in earth system research lab summit greenland and found a news story that said that the Greenland ice sheet was melting quickly in April a month earlier than normal.
Tim Groves makes a good point about using the information in a question as a tool (reading the question carefully & clearly)… using his suggestion about "weather", I searched using
ReplyDeletethe simple: [weather summit greenland] (fwiw, summit seems preferable to summit station – which seems to skew toward Ohio & Pennsylvania…)
and lo and behold, Weather Underground has the forecast & history… and there are other weather sites that bring slightly different options…
see Synop Information for 04416 in Summit, -, Greenland below
Today's forecast to be MUCH WARMER than yesterday. (from Weather Underground)
Today High 16 | Low -1 °F 30% Chance of Precip.
Yesterday High -- | Low 1830 °F Precip. 0 in (assuming a typo…?)
WU, Summit, GL
Synop –graphs & interesting pics that prompted me to check flickr
Weather Quality Reporter
a visual sampling: Summit, Greenland Weather - 2.13.12
one way to get to & from 'nowhere'
the view – being left in 'nowhere'
…are you sure you haven't been? - sunblock, hydration & sunglasses are a good idea, but I'm not sure checks & khakis are suitable attire for the ice shield…teho
the traditional pet of the frigid, frozen flamingo before departure & the ~ 2 mile descent to sea level…
DMR@ Summit, 20**?
hourly temps
it almost appears there are multiple Suns… she has multiple Summit photos…
Ruby Whatever (aka: Robin Carroccia - 294 results): flamingo at the Big House…
a flickr search - 2,036 photos
Big House with aurora… cool
some other stars, auroras & Summit via Ed Stockard
moves to a tour outside ~ 12:45 - from 2004
summer 2007 - oddly, water is a chore
no direct from SFO… would IS/GL qualify as Atlantic fly-over country?
ReplyDeleteit is a multi-leg process… unlikely that one could ever walk out of there…
on the way
…my search attempts keep leading nowhere… but the cool breeze feel good…
ReplyDeletelocal mascot
worth the look for the Summit sense
auroras
also worth a look around – Summit, plus more
Swiss tower - the daily climb
Summit mascot
Ed Stockard
taken in the future…2017?
Ed Stockard - pages 7-9 Summit related
regarding the Swiss tower location and the long shadow it casts in satellite view
Summit layout/site plan… pragmatic outhouse location?
an illustration of "oscillating search wander"
on ground transit
that would be a trek
Sunlight Absorption on the Greenland ice sheet Experiment (SAGE) 2013
more traverse info
the last two paragraphs may indicate on source of the problem… such as it is…
2001
maybe if most stayed home and everyone carried one, or more, in their purse – see #3
hot sauce is essential to survival - see Leslie Jones
JATO assit @ Summit
ReplyDeleteKangerlussuaq, Greenland to Summit
2004
detail
servicing the Antarctic as well
new props
eight bladed in action
NY
109th Airlift Wing NYANG
since there is extra time…
ReplyDeletesome icy, slushy, darkening data sets…
NSIDC
University of Liège
Greenland ice sheet 1948-2014, University of Liège
Polar Portal
firn column
Dartmouth IGERT
Thayer Study: large-scale melting events in both 1889 and 2012
words of the day: “albedo” & "sastrugi"
albedo
sastrugi in action
the ash factor…
ReplyDeletepotential ash source - reminiscent of the recent Alabama/Mississippi search challenge?…
Lake Baikal, Russia burning now… fire & ice (and to the east)
soot/ash/Russia
Kaitlin Keegan source
NAS abstract