With many of his Boise State classmates gearing up for summer fun, Tate Meehan is preparing to embark on a journey filled with hard work and freezing temperatures.
Meehan is in the first year of his master’s program in geophysics and is about to head to Greenland for a research expedition. Joining him on his excursion will be Forrest McCarthy, a mountaineering guide who works with the Wilderness Wildland Alliance and National Science Foundation Polar Programs; Erich Osterberg, a Dartmouth polar geoscientist; and Gabe Lewis and Thomas Overly, both of whom are doctoral students at Dartmouth.
The research team will be studying and measuring the amount of snowfall in an area of the Greenland ice sheet that contains some of the largest snowfall variances. The data obtained by the team will look at the past 50 years of snowfall in the area. This trip will be coming at a potentially dangerous time, however, as Greenland is experiencing an early melting season caused by unseasonably warm weather. The early melting season has some researchers concerned.
According to Meehan, the trip is coming at a crucial time as Greenland has had its warmest first four months to start a year in recorded history.
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