The Arcturus Glacier surge

 

Above we see two photos of Malmbjerget in East Greenland.  The "red mountain" contains the biggest molybdenum resource in Europe, and is currently the scene of a massive open pit mining proposal with a capital investment budget of over a billion US dollars.  The proposers, Greenland Resources Inc, are currently trying to raise an initial USD 820 million, but full consents are in place, and there is a big documentation available re project proposals, environmental assessments etc.  The project is so vast that we are talking in effect of the industrialisation of the Werner Mountains and the Mestersvig area to the north, on the shore of Kong Oskars Fjord.

The reddish coloured outer tip of the mountain, between the two glaciers, will be completely removed by the working of the open pit, and there will be vast infrastructure developments as shown on the map below.

The figures are mind-boggling.  203 million tonnes of waste will be stripped during the working of the open pit, and 115 million tonnes of ore will be taken out, initially stored and then taken out to be milled. Of this, 75 million tonnes of waste and low grade ore will be stored in huge stockpiles on the surfaces of the Schuchert and Arcturius Glaciers.  Surface roadways for heavy plant traffic will be partly on the glaciers themselves and partly on adjacent valley sides.  A 10 km tunnel may or may not be built under the Mellem Pass, to connect the open pit to the valley to the north -- it is planned to have an entrance somewhere near Kolossen.  Also running across the mountain range will be an aerial transporter system about 26 km long, designed to export 35,000 tonnes of ore per day.  No supporting towers can be built on the glaciers, so there will have to be at least two very long spans, one across the Arcturus Glacier and the other across the Mellem Glacier -- and that means at least four massive towers.

A glaciological study of the Arcturus Glacier, designed to understand the likely impacts of this mining / quarrying proposal, wasa published in 2009:

 Glaciological investigations at the Malmbjerg mining prospect, central East Greenland. 

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/242584915_Glaciological_investigations_at_the_Malmbjerg_mining_prospect_central_East_Greenland 

The 2008 measured velocity is 18 m per year. Quote: This can be compared with the present-day average velocity of 22 m per year obtained from feature tracking on two orthophotographs from 2005
and 2007, and using theoretical results relating surface velocity with mean velocity over a cross-section of parabolic shape (Paterson 1994). Considering the uncertainties involved, we conclude that no imbalance has been detected to suggest that a surge of Arcturus Gletscher will occur in the near future.

Clearly that assumption was unwise, because the two photos at the head of this post show that the Arcturus Glacier has recently surged.  I have no dates for the photos,  but the lower one was clearly taken more recently than the upper one.  The surge has carried the snout of the Arcturus Glacier into and onto the surface of the Schuchert Glacier.

Here is a Google Earth 3D representation, dated 17 July 2025:

There are actually two Arcturus Glacier surge loops -- the outer one is not far from the present snout position of the Schuchert Glacier.  This suggests to me that Arcturus Glacier is more active than the Schuchert Glacier, and that it has quite a high surge frequency.

I'm contacting the glaciologists who undertook the Arcturus Glacier study -- but it seems to me that the complexities of the local glaciology have not been adequately taken into account by the proposers of the  open pit project.  The knock-on effects of the major environmental disruptions involved in storing 75 million tonnes of waste and low-grade ore on the surfaces of two glaciers with known surging behaviour are therefore underestimated.

This behaviour will also affect the stability (and hence the cost) of thr transport roadways built on the surfaces of the two glaciers.

I have further concerns about the proposals to build a 1 km airstrip capable of dealing with Hercules transport aircraft on the expansive area of ice-cored moraines beyond and to the west of the Schuchert Glacier snout.  In the published reports there is NOT an adequate assessment of the civil engineering challenges presented.

Watch this space.........