Glacier of the month

My first impression: we ascended the glacier in winter from the south on snow mobiles. Immediately you felt the size and beauty of the icecap, and elation. It expands almost endlessly towards the horizon: a pure white against a blue sky, Ian Brown.

- We worked there for over 10 years, starting in 1998. Primarily, we conducted research on how radar waves and their reflections are affected by different types of snow and firn (intermediate between snow and glacial ice). The neighboring glacier, Salajiekna, was also studied in connection with the Blåmannsisen research, says associate professor Ian Brown from the Department of Physical Geography.

Ian worked on this glacier with some former colleagues at the department: Malin Johansson, Susanne Ingvander, Per Klingbjer and Ceclia Richardson-Näslund.

Read more about:

Ian Brown

The research in Annals of Glaciology

The research in IEEE Xplore

The research in Geografiska Annaler

The International Year of Glaciers' Preservation

April, Mikkaglaciären 67° 413’ N, 17° 695’ E

The beautiful Mikkaglaciären is the most well-known glacier in the Sarek region. It offers a trail to Sarektjåkkå, Sweden's second-highest mountain, and has a significant scientific history, Per Holmlund.

Axel Hamberg began surveying its topography, ice velocity, and mass balance in 1895, making Mikkaglaciären his favorite glacier. Data on its front changes were reported to the International Glacier Commission, where he later became director. In the 1950s and 1960s, Torsten Stenborg studied glacial hydrology extensively.

Per Holmlund resumed this research in the 1980s using ice depth radar and photogrammetry to explain the water pathways through the glacier.

Recent short-term studies continue to report glacier length changes to the World Glacier Monitoring Service. Other researchers from our department, such as Valter Schytt, Wibjörn Karlén, and Gunhild Rosqvist, have also worked on Mikkaglaciären.

May, Riukojietna-Rivgojiehkki 68° 083’ N, 18° 049’ E

My first impression: Fantastic to work on a glacier sitting on top of a mountain with 360º panorama view! Gunhild Rosqvist.

Riukojietna is a small ice cap covering almost 3 km2 on a mountain plateau straddling the border with Norway in northern Sweden. The ice cap is thin, everywhere less than 100 m thick. The position of the ice margin of its outlet glacier was measured for the first time in 1963. Since then, the ice cap has shrunk substantially. Measurements of its annual mass balance began in 1986, and these results help us understand how different types of glaciers respond to changes in temperature and precipitation. Riukojietna is now one of four Swedish “reference glaciers” for the World Glacier Monitoring Service (WGMS).

The accelerated thinning of the ice cap during the last 15 years has exposed nunataks, which are bedrock highs protruding through the glacier surface. Is this the first time we can see these bedrock outcrops? Analysis of quartz chemistry in the bedrock can tell if the bedrock was previously exposed to cosmic rays and, together with results from sediment cores collected from downstream lakes, this data reveals the continuous presence of this ice cap since deglaciation 9700 years ago. Another ongoing study focusses on how aquatic life in downstream lakes is impacted by warming and meltwater from the Riukojietna ice cap.

The following persons have contributed to Riukojietna mass balance, lacustrine, and cosmogenic nuclide field studies: Per Holmlund, Peter Jansson, Wibjörn Karlén, Nina Kirchner, Nat Lifton, Gunnar Østrem, Veijo Pohjola, Gunhild “Ninis” Rosqvist, Valter Schytt, Arjen Stroeven, Carl-Anton Wahlström, and Jan Weckström.

More information, data and publications

Glacier surface mass balance for Rivgojiehkki, Northern Sweden

Tarfala Data Riukojietna

WGMS Fluctuations of glacier browser

Pohjola, V. A., Cole‐Dai, J., Rosqvist, G., Stroeven, A. P., & Thompson, L. G. (2005). Potential to recover climatic information from Scandinavian ice cores: an example from the small ice cap Riukojietna. Geografiska Annaler: Series A, Physical Geography, 87(1), 259–270. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.0435-3676.2005.00257.x

Rosqvist, G., & Østrem, G. (1989). The Sensitivity of a Small Icecap to Climatic Fluctuations. Geografiska Annaler: Series A, Physical Geography, 71(1–2), 99–103. https://doi.org/10.1080/04353676.1989.11880277
 

June, Renland, Greenland 71° N, 27° W

Renland ice cap is separated from the Greenland ice sheet. The surface elevation is 2340 m a.s.l. In 1988 we drilled down to the bedrock. The 325 m long ice core gave us climate information over 120.000 years, says Margareta.

Margareta Hansson is a Professor at the Department of Physical Geography and she studies climate in ice cores from Greenland and Antarctica. She is Sweden's representative in all the major international deep drilling projects in Greenland, such as NorthGRIP, NEEM, and EastGRIP, as well as EPICA and Beyond EPICA in Antarctica.

More information about the research and publications

Margareta Hansson

Hansson, M.E. The Renland ice core: A Northern Hemisphere record of aerosol composition over 120 000 years. Tellus 46B, 390-418, 1994.

Hansson, M.E. and Saltzman, E.S. The first Greenland ice core record of methanesulfonate and sulfate over a full glacial cycle. Geophysical Research Letters 20, 1163-1166, 1993.

Johnsen, S., Clausen, H.B., Dansgaard, W., Gundestrup, N., Hansson, M., Jonsson, P., Steffensen, J.P., Sveinbjörnsdottir, A.E. A "deep" ice core from East Greenland. Meddr. Grönland Geosci. 30, 22pp, 1992.
 

July, Helagsglaciären 62° 54’ N, 12° 27’ E

The glacier on the northeastern slope of the Helags mountain in southern Jämtland is the most southerly located glacier in Sweden.

Today the glacier covers less than 0.40 km2 and has separated in two ice bodies, a northern and southern part. The steep cirque headwall effectively traps winter snow. 

The glacier was first mapped in detail by the geographer Fredrik Enquist in 1908. At that time the glacier covered 0.74 km2. At this time, the end of the Little Ice Age, Helagsglaciären did not reach the moraine ridges usually marking the largest glacier extent since the end of the last glaciation, ca 9500 years ago.

Maybe this glacier responds differently to the combination of changes in temperature and precipitation which makes it an interesting research target.  

Helagsglaciären became an early tourist destination and a hut was built by the Swedish Tourist Association at the foot of the mountain in 1897. This is a perfect starting point for the 1797 m climb to the summit. The trail follows the crest of the glacier cirque offering an outstanding view!

Field work on the glacier

A map and pictures of the glacier through time

Read more 

The County Administrative Board in Jämtland monitors the status of the glacier.
The report “Miljötillståndet i fjällen Jämtlands län 2023” (in Swedish)

August, Rabots glaciär 67° 918’ N, 18° 479’ E

Rabots glaciär has recieved its name after Charles Rabot, a French geographer/glaciologist/explorer who was the first non-indigenous to scale Kebnekaises south summit in 1883, the then highest summit in Sweden. As his party ascended the summit from the west, they walked across the snout of Rabots glaciär and they took the first known photograph of the glacier. The first proper photographic documentation of the glacier was by Fredrik Enquist in 1910.

Rabots glaciär is the largest glacier of the Kebnekaise massif in Sweden. It receives its ice from snow compacted in three cirques cut into the mountain, the middle of which is positioned directly below the two highest summits of Sweden. The glacier has been studied since 1945, when Valter Schytt started glacier observations through Tarfala Research Station (Schytt, 1959).

In the early 1980s, studies on Rabots glaciär intensified as Helgi Björnsson measured its subglacial topography (Björnsson, 1981) and yearly mass balance observations were initiated under the guidance of Roger Hooke (Stroeven & van de Wal, 1990; Brugger, 2007). This allowed a comparison of Rabots glaciär with Storglaciären, both with regards to their dynamics and their responses to climate warming (Stroeven & van de Wal, 1990; Brugger, 2007; Brugger et al., 2005; Brugger and Pankratz, 2015). Although Rabots glaciär has reacted more sluggishly to climate change, the direction of change is for disappearance towards 2100 (Taveirne et al., 2021), not unlike Storglaciären (Oerlemans et al., 1998).Rabots glaciär qualified as a reference for the World Glacier Monitoring System when the mass balance record extended beyond 30 years (WGMS 2025).

In March 2012 a Royal Norwegian Air Force Hercules aircraft crashed into the west-facing wall of Kebnekaise, immediately above Rabots glaciär. Tragically, the crew of five was killed. Approximately 11000 liters of air plane fuel spread over the upper part of Rabots glaciär. Chemical analysis of samples of snow, firn and ice from the crash site allowed for a unique assessment of the longevity of hydrocarbon pollution on a glacier (Rosqvist et al., 2017). The pathways of polluted meltwater through the glacier were mapped using dye tracing (an artificial coloring of the water) (Clason et al., 2015).

Publications

Bjornsson, H., 1981. Radio-echo sounding maps of Storglaciären, Isfallsglaciären and Rabots glaciär, northern Sweden. Geografiska Annaler 63A, 225–231.

Brugger, K.A. 2007. The non-synchronous response of Rabots Glaciär and Storglaciären, northern Sweden, to recent climate change: a comparative study. Annals of Glaciology 46, 275-282.

Brugger, K.A. & L. Pankratz, 2015. Changes in the geometry and volume of Rabots glaciär, Sweden, 2003–2011: Recent accelerated volume loss linked to more negative summer balances. Geografiska Annaler Ser. A Physical Geography 97, 265–278

Brugger, K.A., K.A. Refsnider & M.F. Whitehill, 2005. Variation in glacier length and ice volume of Rabots Glaciär, Sweden, in response to climate change, 1910–2003. Annals of Glaciology 42, 180–188.

Clason, C.C., C. Coch, J. Jarsjö, K. Brugger, P. Jansson & G. Rosqvist. 2015 Dye tracing to determine flow properties of hydrocarbon-polluted Rabots glaciär, Kebnekaise, Sweden. Hydrology and Earth System Sciences 19, 2701-2715. 

Oerlemans, J., B. Anderson, A. Hubbard, P. Huybrechts, T. Jóhanneson, W.H. Knap, M. Schmeits, A.P. Stroeven, R.S.W. van de Wal, J. Wallinga & Z. Zuo 1998. Modelling the response of glaciers to climate warming. Climate Dynamics 14, 267-274.

Rosqvist, G., LaBianca, A., Jarsjö, J., Eriksson, P., Clason. C. 2017. The longevity of hydrocarbon pollution in an Arctic glacier. International Symposium on the Cryosphere in a Changing Climate. Wellington, New Zealand February 12-17 2017.

Schytt, V., 1959. The glaciers of the Kebnekajse-massif. Geografiska Annaler 41, 213–227.

Stroeven, A.P. & R.S.W. van de Wal 1990. A comparison of the mass balances and the flows of Rabots Glaciär and Storglaciären, Kebnekaise, northern Sweden. Geografiska Annaler 72A, 113-118.

Taveirne, M., L. Ekemar, B. González Sánchez, J. Axelsson & Q. Zhang 2021. Mass balance sensitivity and future projections of Rabots Glaciär, Sweden. Climate 9, 126

World Glacier Monitoring Service 2025. WGMS https://wgms.ch/products_ref_glaciers/rabots-scandinavia/

Kårsaglaciären (Gorsajökeln) 68° 21’ 21” N, 18°  19’ 02”

Kårsaglaciären has played an important role not only as a tourist attraction but also as an object for scientific studies. The glacier is easily accessible from the railway, road and the tourist station at Abisko. The first scientific studies of front position, ablation and ice movement were carried out by Fredrik Svenonius in 1884 and 1886. He conducted more extensive surveys in 1908 and 1909 and in 1926 a mass balance program was initiated by Hans W:son Ahlmann. He also produced a detailed topographic map of the glacier and in the 1940s an energy balance project was carried out by C.C. Wallén. In the 1960s Valter Schytt made geodetic mappings and in the late 20th century mass balance and radar soundings were conducted.

The glacier has receded significantly during the last century. In 1926 it covered an area of 2,65 km2 which at present is reduced to 0,44 km2. It is still a beautiful little glacier worth visiting, but it is a completely different view from what was seen in the past.

Vanessa Henriksson and Marika Wennbom from our department recently visited the glacier’s forefield, documenting its geodiversity and vegetation for Vanessa’s ongoing Master’s thesis. The project aims to increase the understanding of vegetation colonization in proglacial areas and how these areas may be used by reindeer. Supervisors are Ninis Rosqvist and Marika Wennbom.