Glaciodyn (Canada) IPY Project: Weather station data collected on the Belcher Glacier, Devon Island Ice Cap, 2008-2009

This project ultimately aimed to run a distributed surface energy balance model coupled with a sub-surface snow model to investigate spatial and temporal variations in surface melt water production on the Belcher Glacier. Detailed measurements of meteorological variables and snow surface properties were collected in the summer (June-September) of 2008 in order to initialize, force, and validate the model. The Belcher Glacier is a major outlet glacier of the Devon Island ice cap and accounts for approximately half of the iceberg calving loss from the ice cap (~15% of the total mass loss). This is a contribution to an International Polar Year (IPY) project, aiming to investigate the hypothesis that hydrologically driven changes in ice flow will increase the rate of mass loss by iceberg calving, and how these dynamics will respond to future climate warming.