Brief communication: Testing a portable Bullard-type temperature lance confirms highly spatially heterogeneous sediment temperatures under shallow water bodies in the Arctic

• Main Authors: Miesner, Frederieke, Cable, William Lambert, Overduin, Pier Paul, Boike, Julia
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Published: 2023
• Subjects: Arctic; Svalbard; Ice; permafrost
• Online Access: https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-2023-149; https://tc.copernicus.org/preprints/tc-2023-149/

The thermal regime in the sediment column below shallow water bodies in Arctic permafrost controls benthic habitats and permafrost stability. We present a robust, portable device that measures detailed temperature-depth-profiles of the near-surface sediments in less than 1 hour. Test campaigns in the Canadian Arctic and on Svalbard have demonstrated its utility in a range of environments during winter and summer. Measured temperatures were spatially heterogeneous, even within single water bodies. We observed the broadest temperature range in water less than 1 m deep, indicating that the bottom-fast ice zone is overlooked by single measurements in deeper water.