---
title: 72-Year Weather Mystery Solved
date: 2026-07-28T15:55:00-04:00
author: University of Maryland
canonical_url: "https://today.umd.edu/72-year-weather-mystery-solved"
section: Articles
---
# 72-Year Weather Mystery Solved

*July 28, 2026* — by [Cazzy Medley](/author/cazzy-medley)


> UMD researcher contributes to study shedding new light on Greenland glacier melt.

*Al Chang Dorothy Hall Carl Benson Mt Zanetti Alaska 1987 1 1920x1080 — UMD scientist Dorothy Hall (center), longtime collaborator Carl Benson (right) and colleague Al Chang (left) pause from field work studying snow and ice in the Wrangell Mountains of Alaska in 1987. Hall would later help Benson complete his final study about a climate-related mystery in 1950s Greenland. (Photos courtesy of Dorothy Hall.)*

<span>“Hot, sticky, miserable weather” might sound like a description of typical Maryland summer, but those words were written in 1954 by a glaciologist working on the vast, frozen expanse of the Greenland Ice Sheet.</span>

<span>The scientist, Carl Benson, and his colleagues had no idea at the time why sultry temperatures had taken hold on the ice. Now, however, a science team that includes a University of Maryland researcher who was a longtime collaborator of Benson has discovered the answer by piecing together records of a dramatic atmospheric phenomenon unknown decades ago. Their findings, </span>[<span>published in the </span>*<span>Journal of Glaciology</span>*](https://doi.org/10.1017/jog.2026.10176)<span>, reveal how today’s technology can help scientists better understand Greenland’s past and monitor its future.</span>

<span>The study’s lead author was Benson, a longtime University of Alaska Fairbanks (UAF) researcher who died in January at age 98; UMD Earth System Science Interdisciplinary Center snow and ice scientist Dorothy Hall and Rick Thoman and Matthew Sturm, both of UAF, rounded out the research team.</span>

<span>The mystery unfolded 72 years ago this month, when a research team working for the U.S. government ventured out from Thule Air Base (now Pituffik Space Base) in northwestern Greenland to study the structure, behavior and geologic history of the ice sheet. Over four years, the team, led by Benson, dug pits into the snow, collected samples, and carefully documented the physical properties of the ice sheet, work that would provide a fundamentally new understanding of ice sheets and glaciers.</span>

<span>On July 11, 1954, the weather turned, and it began to rain. Suddenly, the glacier’s surface temperature rose considerably—above freezing. This persisted for over 60 hours, melting the glacier’s surface into slush.</span>

<span>“Solid overcast, surface snow very wet, good for making snowballs,” wrote Benson in that day’s field notes, which also included his complaints about heat.</span>

The slushy surface made traversing the glacier impossible, leaving the team stranded. But it also presented a rare scientific opportunity to trace surface water as it flowed through the snow and firn—dense, granular snow not yet compacted into ice—in a part of the ice sheet that rarely melts. They saw firsthand how meltwater trickles through channels to create dense, clear “ice lenses” and layers upon refreezing.

The warm, wet weather persisted for three days. But even years afterward, evidence of this melt event was visible in the stratigraphy of the glacier as refrozen slush layers and meltwater columns. The melt event had permanently changed its geological makeup.

A year later, the team drilled a cylindrical sample of ice, known as an ice core, about 48 km away. The sample revealed that the 1954 melt was the heaviest in 68 years. They also learned that melt events were limited from 1886 to the 1920s, then became much more frequent.

The researchers also discovered that evidence of the 1954 melt event appeared clearly on two walls of a three-meters-deep snow pit but was absent on the other two, showing that meltwater had flowed through isolated channels rather than spreading evenly throughout the snowpack.

“Ice cores, though extremely valuable, may greatly underestimate the extent of melt throughout a column of Greenland ice,” said Hall, who met Benson, a pioneering researcher of frozen northern expanses, while doing graduate-level field work in Alaska in 1978. “Thus we cannot know for certain the extent of historical melt events even when ice cores are available.”

While ice cores provide detailed, localized information, satellite sensors are far more effective than ice cores when it comes to mapping the extent of melting across an ice sheet.

“At that time, there was no way to view the ice sheet from above, so \[the team’s\] ability to understand and explain the perplexing melt event was limited,” said Hall. “We can use today’s technology to help explain some decades-old problems such as, ‘Why was there rain at such a high latitude on the Greenland Ice Sheet in July of 1954?’”


*Man climbs icy hill — Benson crosses the ice in Alaska&#039;s Wrangell Mountains in 1987.*




**Topics:** [Research](https://today.umd.edu/tags/research)


**Tags:** [Research](https://today.umd.edu/topic/research)


**Units:** [Earth System Science Interdisciplinary Center](https://today.umd.edu/topic/earth-system-science-interdisciplinary-center), [College of Computer, Mathematical, and Natural Sciences](https://today.umd.edu/topic/college-computer-mathematical-and-natural-sciences)