Search

The continuous change in observed key indicators such as increasing nitrogen deposition, temperatures and precipitation will have marked but uncertain consequences for the ecosystem carbon (C) sink-source functioning of the Arctic. Here, we use multiple in-situ data streams measured by the Greenland Ecosystem Monitoring programme in tight connection with the Soil-Plant-Atmosphere model and climate projections from the high-resolution HIRHAM5 regional model. We apply this modelling framework with focus on two climatically different tundra sites in Greenland (Zackenberg and Kobbefjord) to assess how sensitive the net C uptake will expectedly be under warmer and wetter conditions across the 21st century and pin down the relative contribution to the overall C sink strength from climate versus plant trait variability. Our results suggest that temperatures (5-7.7 °C), total precipitation (19-110 %) and vapour pressure deficit will increase (32-36 %), while shortwave radiation will decline (6-9 %) at both sites by 2100 under the RCP8.5 scenario. Such a combined effect will, on average, intensify the net C uptake by 9-10 g C m -2 year -1 at both sites towards the end of 2100, but Zackenberg is expected to have more than twice the C sink strength capacity of Kobbefjord. Our sensitivity analysis not only reveals that plant traits are the most sensitive parameters controlling the net C exchange in both sites at the beginning and end of the century, but also that the projected increase in the net C uptake will likely be similarly influenced by future changes in climate and existing local nutrient conditions. A series of experiments forcing realistic changes in plant nitrogen status at both sites corroborates this hypothesis. This work proves the unique synergy between monitoring data and numerical models to assist robust model calibration/validation and narrow uncertainty ranges and ultimately produce more reliable C cycle projections in understudied regions such as Greenland., Competing Interests: Declaration of competing interest The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper., (Copyright © 2022 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.)

In recent decades, meltwater runoff has accelerated to become the dominant mechanism for mass loss in the Greenland ice sheet 1-3 . In Greenland's high-elevation interior, porous snow and firn accumulate; these can absorb surface meltwater and inhibit runoff 4 , but this buffering effect is limited if enough water refreezes near the surface to restrict percolation 5,6 . However, the influence of refreezing on runoff from Greenland remains largely unquantified. Here we use firn cores, radar observations and regional climate models to show that recent increases in meltwater have resulted in the formation of metres-thick, low-permeability 'ice slabs' that have expanded the Greenland ice sheet's total runoff area by 26 ± 3 per cent since 2001. Although runoff from the top of ice slabs has added less than one millimetre to global sea-level rise so far, this contribution will grow substantially as ice slabs expand inland in a warming climate. Runoff over ice slabs is set to contribute 7 to 33 millimetres and 17 to 74 millimetres to global sea-level rise by 2100 under moderate- and high-emissions scenarios, respectively-approximately double the estimated runoff from Greenland's high-elevation interior, as predicted by surface mass balance models without ice slabs. Ice slabs will have an important role in enhancing surface meltwater feedback processes, fundamentally altering the ice sheet's present and future hydrology.

The recent decades of accelerating mass loss of the Greenland ice sheet have arisen from an increase in both surface meltwater runoff and ice flow discharge from tidewater glaciers. Despite the role of the Greenland ice sheet as the dominant individual cryospheric contributor to sea level rise in recent decades, no observational record of its mass loss spans the 30-year period needed to assess its climatological state. We present for the first time a 40-year (1975-2014) time series of observed meltwater discharge from a >6500-km 2 catchment of the southwestern Greenland ice sheet. We find that an abrupt 80% increase in runoff occurring between the 1976-2002 and 2003-2014 periods is due to a shift in atmospheric circulation, with meridional exchange events occurring more frequently over Greenland, establishing the first observation-based connection between ice sheet runoff and climate change.

Meltwater runoff from the Greenland ice sheet surface influences surface mass balance (SMB), ice dynamics, and global sea level rise, but is estimated with climate models and thus difficult to validate. We present a way to measure ice surface runoff directly, from hourly in situ supraglacial river discharge measurements and simultaneous high-resolution satellite/drone remote sensing of upstream fluvial catchment area. A first 72-h trial for a 63.1-km 2 moulin-terminating internally drained catchment (IDC) on Greenland's midelevation (1,207-1,381 m above sea level) ablation zone is compared with melt and runoff simulations from HIRHAM5, MAR3.6, RACMO2.3, MERRA-2, and SEB climate/SMB models. Current models cannot reproduce peak discharges or timing of runoff entering moulins but are improved using synthetic unit hydrograph (SUH) theory. Retroactive SUH applications to two older field studies reproduce their findings, signifying that remotely sensed IDC area, shape, and supraglacial river length are useful for predicting delays in peak runoff delivery to moulins. Applying SUH to HIRHAM5, MAR3.6, and RACMO2.3 gridded melt products for 799 surrounding IDCs suggests their terminal moulins receive lower peak discharges, less diurnal variability, and asynchronous runoff timing relative to climate/SMB model output alone. Conversely, large IDCs produce high moulin discharges, even at high elevations where melt rates are low. During this particular field experiment, models overestimated runoff by +21 to +58%, linked to overestimated surface ablation and possible meltwater retention in bare, porous, low-density ice. Direct measurements of ice surface runoff will improve climate/SMB models, and incorporating remotely sensed IDCs will aid coupling of SMB with ice dynamics and subglacial systems., Competing Interests: The authors declare no conflict of interest., (Copyright © 2017 the Author(s). Published by PNAS.)

Multimodel ensembles are widely analyzed to estimate the range of future regional climate change projections. For an ensemble of climate models, the result is often portrayed by showing maps of the geographical distribution of the multimodel mean results and associated uncertainties represented by model spread at the grid point scale. Here we use a set of CMIP5 models to show that presenting statistics this way results in an overestimation of the projected range leading to physically implausible patterns of change on global but also on regional scales. We point out that similar inconsistencies occur in impact analyses relying on multimodel information extracted using statistics at the regional scale, for example, when a subset of CMIP models is selected to represent regional model spread. Consequently, the risk of unwanted impacts may be overestimated at larger scales as climate change impacts will never be realized as the worst (or best) case everywhere.

Terrestrial freshwater runoff strongly influences physical and biogeochemical processes at the fjord scale and can have global impacts when considered at the Greenland scale. We investigate the performance of the HIRHAM5 regional climate model over the catchments delivering freshwater to Tyrolerfjord and Young Sound by comparing to the unique Greenland Ecological Monitoring database of in situ observations from this region. Based on these findings, we estimate and discuss the fraction of runoff originating from glacierized and non-glacierized land delivered at the daily scale between 1996 and 2008. We find that glaciers contributed on average 50-80% of annual terrestrial runoff when considering different sections of Tyrolerfjord-Young Sound, but snowpack depletion on land and consequently runoff happens about one month earlier in the model than observed in the field. The temporal shift in the model is a likely explanation why summer surface salinity in the inner fjord did not correlate to modelled runoff.