Here is a finite element simulation of strong winds in the Scharffenbergbotnen blue ice area.
Simulations made by Torsten Malm (Aalto Univ.) and Thomas Zwinger (CSC - IT Center for Science) using Elmer, animation made by Jyrky Hokkanen (CSC). [Thesis]
It so happens that i have some validation data. But first lets take a view of the valley from one of the northernmost nunataks (North is the left side of the youtube video).
Photo taken from one of the peaks in the left side of the video (on a nice day). The camp was on the moraine to the left of the icefall in the back of the valley.
My validation data:
The strong winds in the deep end of the valley are roughly located where we had a camp in 2006/7.
Camp before the storm.
After a particular violent storm we came back to our camp and found:
- the pyramid tent gone (it used to be where all the boxes are scattered). We found it later a kilometre away.
- Food scattered around tens of kilometres away from our camp site (found by SWEDARP people).
- Our nice hilleberg tent completely broken.
- The huge sledge flipped upside down.
- A huge mallet blown ~100metres away.
- we lost lots of sample bottles etc in this storm, but we managed to collect samples anyway.
Camp after the storm.
So yep … the model is right!
There are definitely very strong winds where it predicts it should be.