Rock Temperatures: Mittivakkat Nunatak, 1993-2002

Air and bedrock temperature data were collected every three hours from a nunatak at 515 meters above sea level on the Mittivakkat glacier in southeast Greenland. The dataset includes air temperature at 2 meters and rock temperatures at depths of 25 and 100 centimeters, providing a record of near-surface conditions in a high-Arctic glacial environment. A notable gap exists for the summer of 1998.

Use Cases

• Modeling permafrost and bedrock thermal regimes based on multi-depth temperature measurements.
• Analyzing Arctic surface air temperature trends from a high-elevation coastal Greenland site.
• Studying glacial nunatak microclimates using concurrent air and subsurface temperature data.
• Calibrating remote sensing data for ice sheet margins with in-situ temperature observations.

Strengths

• Provides a decade-long, high-temporal-resolution record (3-hour intervals) from 1993 to 2002.
• Contains concurrent measurements of air temperature and bedrock temperature at two distinct depths.
• Hosted by NASA, indicating a level of institutional curation and credibility.

Limitations

• Metadata completeness is low; specific column names, row counts, and file sizes are not provided across sources.
• A significant data gap is explicitly noted for the summer of 1998.
• Sources conflict on the 'last updated' date, with one showing 2002 and others showing a future date of 2026.

Provenance

Source

National Aeronautics and Space Administration

Collection Method

In-situ measurements collected at 3-hour intervals.

Time Range

1993 to 2002

Freshness

2002-12-31 23:59:59.999000

Geography

Mittivakkat glacier nunatak, southeast Greenland (515 m ASL)