The Norwegian Thermal State of Permafrost (TSP) project drilled its first monitoring borehole in Longyearbyen on February 28th. TSP is one of two UNIS-led International Polar Year (IPY) projects, which aims at understanding the conditions and effects of global warming on the state of the permafrost.

Text: Hanne H. Christiansen, UNIS Associate Professor in Physical geography and TSP Norway project leader

To establish permafrost temperature monitoring in different landforms, a winter drilling campaign started Thursday February 28th with a successful drilling of a 9.8 m deep borehole in glaciofluvial sediments in the central part of Longyearbyen valley.

The hole was drilled approximately 100 meters south of Longyearbyen school, in challenging meteorological conditions, with an air temperature of -17ºC, and with a wind speed of 10 m/s, so the effective air temperature was close to -40ºC.

The Majgøril drillrigg in action in Longyear valley. Dust comes up as the drill hammers it way into the ground. (Photo: Hanne H. Christiansen).

Never the less, Jomar Finseth from Sintef and his assistant Ørjan Nerland, NGI, managed with the Sintef/UNIS drillrigg “Majgøril” in one day to drill down to 10 meters in the coarse-grained glaciofluvial sediments, which have accumulated in the Longyear valley.

A casing was inserted into the borehole, and a 9.5 m long thermistor string was installed into the cased hole by TSP scientists and students immediately after the drilling finished. The drilling lasted around 4 hours.

School project
As part of the international education activities in the TSP project, a school permafrost borehole temperature monitoring programme is taking place, coordinated by Dr. Kenji Yoshikawa, University of Alaska. More information is found at http://www.uaf.edu/permafrost.

Dr. Yoshikawa is installing permafrost monitoring projects in schools across Alaska. In Norway we assume that only Longyearbyen School stands on permafrost, so most likely this will be the only Norwegian school to join this school permafrost monitoring network.

Happy backfilling the borehole after the casing is in place: Niklas Allroggen (left) and Hanne H. Christiansen. (Photo: Stefanie Härtel).About TSP NORWAY
The main objective of TSP NORWAY is to measure and model the permafrost distribution in Norway and Svalbard, including its thermal state, thickness and influence on periglacial landscape-forming processes.

The project focuses on empirical and numerical modelling of permafrost distribution and thermal heat fluxes in the ground, to study the impacts of past and future climate variability on permafrost distribution as demonstrated by permafrost landform activity.

A sub goal is to provide within the international TSP project a complete coverage of the thermal state of permafrost in the North Atlantic region, by instrumenting existing and new boreholes for thermal registration along a W-E transect (Greenland-Iceland-Central Scandinavia) and a S-N transect (southern Norway-Svalbard).

The research project will cover a significant part of this area by establishing two transects with intensive permafrost monitoring sites from maritime to continental areas in northern Norway and in Svalbard.

Drilling operation in front of Longyearbyen School. The sun in mid day now reaches almost to sea level on the south facing mountain side north of Longyearbyen. (Photo: Hanne H. Christiansen).