Researchers Use GPS-tracked icebergs to improve climate models

At the University of Maine, scientists are breaking new ground in understanding how climate change is affecting the Greenland Ice Sheet. They’ve devised a new way to study the changes in real-time. The new method is by attaching GPS devices to icebergs to track their movements.

Between 2014 and 2019, these GPS devices kept tabs on 13 icebergs as they journeyed through Greenland’s Ilulissat Icefjord. Led by Kristin Schild and David Sutherland from the University of Oregon, the team collected a treasure trove of data. Sydney Baratta, an undergraduate student, used this data for her senior project and continued studying it in grad school.

“Think about ice cubes in a glass of water. They float,” said Baratta. “But if it’s in a fjord, under the influence of other forces like wind and the currents, the icebergs move around. What we wanted to do was put GPS trackers on those icebergs to infer what the circulation in the fjord is and see how that is influenced by the environment.”

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