Serving Earth Science Inc

We are raising funds to purchase new equipment to study McCall Glacier, located in Arctic Alaska. The research program here has been ongoing since 1957 and is the premier Arctic glacier research site in the US. We have been leading the field program here since 2003. The dynamics of the glacier are changing rapidly at the moment -- due to climate warming and the rise of the late-summer snowline above the top of the glacier, the ice has been cooling and is now freezing to the bed, reducing sliding.

We wish to study this process in detail with a series of new continuously-recording GPS stations down the length of the glacier along with a new weather station to better inform us of the melt processes contributing water to the bed. What we learn here is important in its own right and to the downstream ecology, but perhaps as importantly relates directly to the same processes currently occurring at the Greenland ice sheet which is much hard to study due to its size. The funding raised here will go solely towards the purchase of supplies to build the necessary instruments, which will be constructed, transported and installed by Dr. Matt Nolan in May 2024.

The instruments needed here do not exist for off-the-shelf purchase so must be assembled at parts level, which saves considerable cost even if completed units were available. We have considerable experience designing, building, installing, and maintaining remote monitoring equipment in the Arctic.

For more information, please visit www.drmattnolan.com/blog