GreenFjord campaign

A look back at the GreenFjord campaign (a 'Flagship' project of the Swiss Polar Institute SPI, coordinated by the young EPFL-ENAC professor Julia Schmale) in which the SENSE team took part between 22 August and 6 September. This involved the deployment of the project's marine activities - coordinated by Lausanne University professor Samuel Jaccard - in two fjords located in the south-western sector of Greenland, in the vicinity of the villages of Narsaq and Qaqortoq.

Aboard the Greenlandic oceanographic vessel SANNA from the Greenland Institute of Natural Resources, water samples were taken to depths of more than 600 m at certain points in the fjords, with a view to geochemical analyses as well as e-DNA in collaboration with ETH Zürich. As for SENSE, we deployed the SubOcean laser sensor with the aim of characterising the flow of the greenhouse gas methane from the two types of fjord studied, and also determining whether sub-glacial meltwater is a significant source of this gas. Three people from SENSE took part in the work: Sébastien Lavanchy, Christel Hassler and Jérôme Chappellaz.

The campaign went well overall, thanks in particular to the admirable Greenlandic crew, who were very efficient and friendly, not hesitating to take the ship as close as possible to the many icebergs dotting one of the two fjords. However, the SENSE team had to spend several days trying to solve unexpected technical problems with the SubOcean instrument, fortunately with the remarkable technical support of Roberto Grilli at the IGE in Grenoble, France. The trials and tribulations of the field, as they say... And the trials and tribulations of a prototype that still needs a few improvements.

In any case, in the end we have some very nice data in our hands, which we can now use in the laboratory. Special thanks to Isabel Wild, the administrative manager of the SENSE unit, for all her help with the logistics of this expedition.

Photo credits: Jérôme Chappellaz and Samuel Jaccard

EPFL ENAC Ferring Pharmaceuticals