Downscaling of Global to Local Scale Climate Change Impactsaround Pituffik Space Base, Greenland

The Pituffik Space Base in Greenland, which projects radar over the Arctic Ocean and northern coast of Russia, is a critical piece of U.S. defense infrastructure in the Arctic that is sensitive to climate impacts and is situated in a ‘hot spot’ of rapid climate change. The extreme climate of northwest Greenland has widespread impacts at Pituffik, and flooding induced by climate change threatens the base, its operations, and surrounding communities. In addition, sea ice across the Arctic and in Baffin Bay in particular has retreated rapidly in recent decades, and the adjacent margin of the Greenland ice sheet has also experienced enhanced melting.

The goal of this project is to assess the climate security of northwest Greenland by investigating and understanding trends in past and expected future climate of the region. Our focus is on the Pituffik Space Base and the surface conditions that adversely affect Base operations and the surrounding region, in addition to improving spatial representation in global Earth system models. Our 2023 field campaign sought to examine the impact of precipitation, glacial melt, streamflow, water chemistry, and sedimentation in and around the Pituffik Space Base, through the use of circulation-based climate downscaling coupled with an assessment of local water chemistry and vulnerability of transportation infrastructure at the Base. Our first field season, July 2023, saw the deployment of a temporary meteorological station in the vicinity of the Greenland Ice Sheet, in addition to continuous stream flow monitoring at multiple locations. The goal of these continuous monitoring sites were to capture water level, flow rate and potential instances of local precipitation, and to tie such events to the larger scale synoptics of the region. Instrumented sites were chosen to facilitate comparison of observed drivers (temperature, wind, solar radiation, etc.) measured at the ice sheet, and observed water flow and water chemistry at two stream crossing locations. This comparison may serve as a baseline for projected scenarios and their potential impact on biogeochemistry and the transportation infrastructure at Pituffik.