Svalbard Glaciers 2017
** An Arctic Club Award Expedition 2017 **
Location: Longyearbyen, Svalbard; Lat & Long: 78.220°N, 15.650°E
Members of the Svalbard 2017 team: From left to right; William Ogden, Connor Downes, Callum Cochrane, James Dickinson and Carl Giardina (back row); Holly Chubb (team leader), Hayley Andrews and Emily Cave.
Dates: 28 June to 20 July 2017
Affiliation: Geography Department, Newcastle University
Svalbard 2017 - Newcastle University - Expedition Report
Follow us on 
@nclsvalbard2017
Contact: H.Chubb1@newcastle.ac.uk (or through the Arctic Club): web@arcticclub.org.uk
29 June: The team has made it to Svalbard and settled into our new home!
26 July: Finally home from our Svalbard expedition! Our team has had the best 3 and a half weeks researching glaciers in the Arctic and we would like to thank all of our grant providers, Newcastle University and especially the team at @unisvalbard without whom we would not have been able to have had such an amazing experience.
See them in action: 
nclsvalbardexped2017
Introduction: Welcome to our Summer Expedition to Svalbard! We are a team of second year BSc Geography students who will be spending a month completing our dissertation research in Svalbard, a remote Arctic Archipelago at 78°North. Our field research combines to look at the geomorphology of land-terminating glaciers in Svalbard, but each member of the team has an individual project, all of which are looking at how increasing air temperatures are affecting Arctic glaciers. We will be based at UNIS, the University Centre in Svalbard, which is the world's northernmost institution for higher education and research, located in Longyearbyen, Spitsbergen, Svalbard. The location means that we will be hiking to Longyearbreen daily and Scott Turnerbreen bi-weekly to conduct our dissertation research.
Overarching aim: To evaluate glaciological, hydrological and geomorphological changes on Longyearbreen and Scott Turnerbreen, Svalbard by gaining a further understanding of spatial and temporal changes within these glaciers.
Objectives: We will be studying the response of two main land-terminating glaciers to increasing air temperatures because of climate change. These are Longyearbreen and Scott Turnerbreen, with the potential to expand our work to Larsbreen. We will be studying glacial hydrology, discharge and efficiency, the effect of debris and water temperature on melt, and overall surface melt. We will be employing a variety of different field methods including mapping, water chemistry analysis and ablation stake measurements in order to determine the effect of an increasing climate on arctic glaciers as a whole.
Our individual project objectives to investigate on Longyearbreen, and Scott Turnerbreen glaciers are:-
Surface mass balance; The effect nof debrisn on melt; Meltwayerand discharge; Suspended sediment concentration and discharge; Water chemistry and hydrological effciency; Glacial flow velocity; Water temperatures and its effct on melt; Satellite imagery to map the glacier termination.
Supported by: Gino Watkins Memorial Fund, Newcastle University Expeditions Committee, Scottish Arctic Club, Sir Philip Reckitt Educational Trust, Gilchrist Educational Trust, Royal Geographic Society with IBG Lord Mayor's 800 Anniversary Awards.