Objectives
The project aims at increasing data coverage of local and peripheral glaciers (i.e. disconnected from the Greenland Ice Sheet), particularly in the Aqqutikisoq-Sisimiut area. In this regards LOGS will start a detailed monitoring of the Aqqutikitsoq glacier area, near Sisimiut. This area is relevant to the local community for several aspects. First, these glaciers provide summer runoff for the hydropower plant of Sisimiut. Their future evolution will directly impact the efficiency of the town’s energy production. Second, the Aqqutikitsoq Mountains are a popular recreational area and the municipality has given concession to develop tourist activities as summer skiing and glacier hiking. In this context, the community need an assessment of the crevasses and icefalls in the glacier area, and their future evolution. The project has also the ambition to create the basis for a new glacier monitoring site on the west coast of Greenland, very close to the K-transect, filling the existing gap from Nuuk to Disko Island.
This will be done especially to constrain the past and future evolution of the cryosphere in this area, under projected global warming scenario, answering to the following:
i) how many LGs are likely to vanish by the end of the 21st century under different climate forcing scenarios or eventually already lie below the envELA and are therefore projected to quickly disappear (next 1-3 decades)?
ii) what is the projected envELA rise in the Sisimiut area under different climate-forcing scenarios?
iii) how much of the late Holocene/little ice age (LIA) area and volume of glaciers remains today in the Sisimiut area and how much the ELA of LG in the Sisimiut area raised since the LIA?

Project Partners
• Greenland Winter Warning Association-GWWA
• Arctic DTU
• Department of Geosciences of Fribourg University (CH)
• Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland-GEUS (DK)
• ESA Sentinel Hub
• Nukissiorfiit, hydropower plant Sisimiut (Greenland)