The first Chinese automatic weather station on the Greenland ice sheet.

The Greenland ice sheet(GrIS)is the second largest ice sheet in the world,but it is the largest contributor to sea level rise[1]as global warming continues.If its mass was lost completely,global mean sea level would rise by about 7.2 m[2].Over the recent three decades,mass loss of the GrIS driven by oceanic and atmospheric warming has been significantly increased[3].In-situ meteorologi-cal measurements of the surface of the GrIS are very important to better understand the key processes of GrIS mass loss,such as energy balance,accumulation,and melting[4].Although the earli-est in-situ observations for the GrIS had been carried out since the middle of the 19th century by glaciological field investigations[5],meteorological measurements are still scarce due to the difficulty of accessing the GrIS.Currently,three weather observation net-works are operating in the GrIS.These are the Danish Meteorolog-ical Institute Network(DMI),the Greenland Climate Network(GC-Net),and the Programme for Monitoring of the Greenland Ice Sheet(PROMICE)[4,6,7].The GC-Net will be gradually merged into PRO-MICE over the next few years.All these networks were set up to obtain more than 20 years of observations of the GrIS,which have contributed substantially to the understanding of its changes.Chi-nese researchers have not yet placed any weather observation instruments on the GrIS before this study.Most of the studies con-ducted by Chinese researchers are based on remote sensing tech-nology and regional climate models(RCMs)[8-10].