Grant from Aage V. Jensen

We are most grateful for receiving funding from the Danish Fund ‘Aage V. Jensens fonde‘ for research in Ikka Fjord, SW Greenland. The funding will be spent on carrying out oceanographic studies and making CTD profiles in Ikka Fjord to obtain good, solid seawater data that can be used as background data for our studies of the ikaite columns in Ikka Fjord.

Oceanographer Jesper Højdal from the company JJH HydroCharting will be doing this work for us. The plan is to do the CTD profiles in October this year with local help from the community Arsuk. Jesper Højdal has the advantage of a thorough local knowledge of the area from serving in the Danish Navy and working at ‘Søopmålingen’. Furthermore, he has lived for four years at the Grønnedal Naval Base close to Ikka Fjord and Arsuk. In addition to the CTD profiles, he will deploy 10 dataloggers in the seawater to log the seawater temperatures of Ikka Fjord over the coming year. This will provide us with continuous and valuable temperature data that will shed light on how warm the seawater actually gets in Ikka Fjord, and for how long a period the temperature is above 6 degrees. The temperature of the seawater is crucial for the stability and mineralogy of the columns. Preferably, it shouldn’t rise above 6 degrees to prevent a mineral change in the columns, but all data so far indicate that the seawater of Ikka Fjord is warmer for larger parts of the year.

With this grant from Aage V. Jensens fonde we are now able to obtain this data, which is of importance to all the researchers working within the Ikka project. We sincerely thank Aage V. Jensen for their support!