The abandoned ice sheet base at Camp Century, Greenland, in a warming climate

Colgan, William; Machguth, Horst; MacFerrin, Mike; Colgan, Jeff D.; As, Dirk van; MacGregor, Joseph A.

doi:10.1002/2016GL069688

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The abandoned ice sheet base at Camp Century, Greenland, in a warming climate

Colgan, William Lassonde School of Engineering, York University, Toronto, Ontario, Canada - Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences, University of Colorado Boulder, USA
Machguth, Horst Department of Geography, University of Zurich, Switzerland - Department of Geosciences, University of Fribourg, Switzerland
MacFerrin, Mike Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences, University of Colorado Boulder, USA
Colgan, Jeff D. Watson Institute, Brown University, Providence, Rhode Island, USA
As, Dirk van Department of Glaciology and Climate, Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland, Copenhagen, Denmark
MacGregor, Joseph A. Cryospheric Sciences Laboratory (Code 615), NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Maryland, USA

16.08.2016

Published in:

Geophysical Research Letters. - 2016, vol. 43, no. 15, p. 8091–8096

English In 1959 the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers built Camp Century beneath the surface of the northwestern Greenland Ice Sheet. There they studied the feasibility of deploying ballistic missiles within the ice sheet. The base and its wastes were abandoned with minimal decommissioning in 1967, under the assumption they would be preserved for eternity by perpetually accumulating snowfall. Here we show that a transition in ice sheet surface mass balance at Camp Century from net accumulation to net ablation is plausible within the next 75 years, under a business-as-usual anthropogenic emissions scenario (Representative Concentration Pathway 8.5). Net ablation would guarantee the eventual remobilization of physical, chemical, biological, and radiological wastes abandoned at the site. While Camp Century and four other contemporaneous ice sheet bases were legally established under a Danish-U.S. treaty, the potential remobilization of their abandoned wastes, previously regarded as sequestered, represents an entirely new pathway of political dispute resulting from climate change.

Faculty

Faculté des sciences et de médecine

Department

Département de Géosciences

Language