Qualla: Tarfala Research Station

Tarfala Research Station: Introduction

Fri, 27 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Alexandar Vujadinovic, CC BY-SA 3.0. On 20 December 1992, a katabatic wind screamed down the Tarfala Valley and hit 81 meters per second -- 290 kilometers per hour -- setting a record that still stands as the highest wind speed ever measured in Sweden. The instruments that captured it belong to Tarfala Research Station, a cluster of buildings at 1,135 meters elevation in the shadow of Kebnekaise, Sweden's highest mountain. Run by Stockholm University since 1961, the station exists for one primary purpose: to watch glaciers die, grow, and tell their stories about a changing climate. It has been doing so longer than any other research station on Earth.

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Image: Alexandar Vujadinovic | CC BY-SA 3.0

Tarfala Research Station: Eighty Years of Watching Ice

Fri, 27 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Leonhard Lenz, CC0. Regular glaciological measurements at Storglaciaren began in 1946, just after the end of World War II, making it the longest continuous glacier mass balance study in the world. The work is painstaking and physical: each winter, researchers dig snow pits in the accumulation zone, ...

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Image: Leonhard Lenz | CC0

Tarfala Research Station: Frozen Ground Beneath

Fri, 27 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Leonhard Lenz, CC0. Until the late 1970s, scientists doubted that mountain permafrost existed in the Scandinavian mountains at all. Tarfala changed that. In 1976, refraction seismic soundings proved conclusively that the valley sits within a zone of widespread discontinuous permafrost, with frozen g...

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Image: Leonhard Lenz | CC0

Tarfala Research Station: A Station Built and Rebuilt

Fri, 27 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Leonhard Lenz, CC0. Tarfala's history is one of stubborn persistence against the elements. Annual university courses began in 1959, and the station was officially inaugurated in 1961, expanded with four buildings funded by the Wallenberg Foundation. Over the following decades, a sauna, laboratory, l...

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Image: Leonhard Lenz | CC0

Tarfala Research Station: Continental Climate, Maritime Neighbor

Fri, 27 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Alexandar Vujadinovic, CC BY-SA 3.0. The Tarfala Valley occupies a peculiar climatic position. Though only a mountain ridge separates it from Norway's western coast, the valley's climate is surprisingly continental -- drier, with sharper temperature swings than the maritime conditions just to the west. Annual precip...

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Image: Alexandar Vujadinovic | CC BY-SA 3.0