The Greenland Climate Network (GC-Net) was established in spring 1991 as part of the Program for Arctic Regional Climate Assessment (PARCA), with the emphasis to monitor climatological and glaciological parameters at various locations on the Greenland ice sheet. Presently, the network monitors 350 parameters from fourteen stations distributed over the entire ice sheet.
Climatological observations and surface energy balance studies are the keys to the understanding of the surface processes linked with ice sheet mass balance. A considerable amount of surface energy balance data have been collected at the ETH/CU research camp since 1991, located at the ice sheet equilibrium line altitude (ELA), about 89 km east of Jakobshavn at 69.56 N, 49.28 W. Eight years of detailed climatological and glaciological measurements at the ELA provide valuable insight on the magnitude of the seasonal and interannual variability. The mean annual temperature has increased by 0.22 deg. C per year since 1991. Summer temperatures showed no noticeable trend, whereas mean winter temperatures increased significantly. The surface climatology such as radiation balance, sensible and latent heat fluxes will be discussed for the entire Greenland ice sheet based on GC-Net data since 1995