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Watermass transformation in the Irminger Sea, a key region for the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation, is influenced by atmospheric and oceanic variability. Strong wintertime atmospheric forcing in 2015 resulted in enhanced convection and the densification of the Irminger Sea. Deep convection persisted until 2018, even though winters following 2015 were mild. We show that this behavior can be attributed to an initially slow convergence of buoyancy, followed by more rapid convergence of buoyancy. This two-stage recovery, in turn, is consistent with restratification driven by baroclinic instability of the Irminger Current (IC), that flows around the basin. The initial, slow restratification resulted from the weak horizontal density gradients created by the widespread 2015 atmospheric heat loss. Faster restratification occurred once the IC recovered. This mechanism explains the delayed recovery of the Irminger Sea following a single extreme winter and has implications for the ventilation and overturning that occurs in the basin. Key Points Widespread buoyancy loss across the Irminger interior and Irminger Current (IC) delayed the recovery of the interior from strong cooling in 2015 Baroclinic instabilities shed from the IC are the dominant source of buoyancy restratifying the sub-surface Irminger interior It is important to consider changes in the IC when considering drivers of variability in convection, ventilation, and the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation Plain Language Summary The Irminger Sea, between Greenland and Iceland, is known to be an important driver of variability in the global ocean circulation that regulates global climate. During the 2015 winter, the Irminger Sea experienced widespread cooling and buoyancy loss down to 1,000 m, resulting in deeper wintertime mixing than had been observed in the region for many years. This low buoyancy state and deep wintertime mixing persisted from 2015 to 2018, despite a return to average atmospheri

The Northeast Greenland Ice Stream has recently seen significant change to its floating margins and has been identified as vulnerable to future climate warming. Inflow of warm Atlantic Intermediate Water (AIW) from the continental shelf has been observed in the vicinity of the Nioghalvfjerdsfjorden (79∘ N) Glacier calving front, but AIW penetration deep into the ice shelf cavity has not been observed directly. Here, we report temperature and salinity measurements from profiles in an epishelf lake, which provide the first direct evidence of AIW proximal to the grounding line of 79∘ N Glacier, over 50 km from the calving front. We also report evidence for partial un-grounding of the margin of 79∘ N Glacier taking place at the western end of the epishelf lake. Comparison of our measurements to those close to the calving front shows that AIW transits the cavity to reach the grounding line within a few months. The observations provide support for modelling studies that infer AIW-driven basal melt proximal to the grounding line and demonstrate that offshore oceanographic changes can be rapidly transmitted throughout the sub-ice-shelf cavity, with implications for near-future stability of the ice stream.

© The Author(s), 2022. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License. The definitive version was published in Biló, T., Straneo, F., Holte, J., & Le Bras, I. Arrival of new great salinity anomaly weakens convection in the Irminger Sea. Geophysical Research Letters, 49(11), (2022): e2022GL098857, https://doi.org/10.1029/2022gl098857., The Subpolar North Atlantic is prone to recurrent extreme freshening events called Great Salinity Anomalies (GSAs). Here, we combine hydrographic ocean analyses and moored observations to document the arrival, spreading, and impacts of the most recent GSA in the Irminger Sea. This GSA is associated with a rapid freshening of the upper Irminger Sea between 2015 and 2020, culminating in annually averaged salinities as low as the freshest years of the 1990s and possibly since 1960. Upon the GSA propagation into the Irminger Sea over the Reykjanes Ridge, the boundary currents rapidly advected its signal around the basin within months while fresher waters slowly spread and accumulated into the interior. The anomalies in the interior freshened waters produced by deep convection during the 2017–2018 winter and actively contributed to the suppression of deep convection in the following two winters., We gratefully acknowledge the US National Science Foundation for funding this work under grants OCE-1258823, OCE-1756272, OCE-1948335, and OCE-2038481.

Author Posting. © American Meteorological Society, 2022. This article is posted here by permission of American Meteorological Society for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Journal of Physical Oceanography 52(3), (2022): 363–382, https://doi.org/10.1175/jpo-d-21-0084.1., Meltwater from Greenland is an important freshwater source for the North Atlantic Ocean, released into the ocean at the head of fjords in the form of runoff, submarine melt, and icebergs. The meltwater release gives rise to complex in-fjord transformations that result in its dilution through mixing with other water masses. The transformed waters, which contain the meltwater, are exported from the fjords as a new water mass Glacially Modified Water (GMW). Here we use summer hydrographic data collected from 2013 to 2019 in Upernavik, a major glacial fjord in northwest Greenland, to describe the water masses that flow into the fjord from the shelf and the exported GMWs. Using an optimum multi-parameter technique across multiple years we then show that GMW is composed of 57.8% ± 8.1% Atlantic Water (AW), 41.0% ± 8.3% Polar Water (PW), 1.0% ± 0.1% subglacial discharge, and 0.2% ± 0.2% submarine meltwater. We show that the GMW fractional composition cannot be described by buoyant plume theory alone since it includes lateral mixing within the upper layers of the fjord not accounted for by buoyant plume dynamics. Consistent with its composition, we find that changes in GMW properties reflect changes in the AW and PW source waters. Using the obtained dilution ratios, this study suggests that the exchange across the fjord mouth during summer is on the order of 50 mSv (1 Sv ≡ 106 m3 s−1) (compared to a freshwater input of 0.5 mSv). This study provides a first-order parameterization for the exchange at the mouth of glacial fjords for large-scale ocean models., This work was partially supported by the Centre for Climate Dynamics (SKD) at the Bjerknes Centre for Climate Research. The authors thank NASA and the OMG consortium for making observational data freely available, and acknowledge M. Morlighem for good support in the early stages of this project. MM and LHS and would also like to thank Ø. Paasche, the ACER project, and the U.S. Norway Fulbright Foundation for the Norwegian Arctic Chair Grant 2019–20 that made the visit to Scripps Institution of Oceanography possible. FS acknowledges support from the DOE Office of Science Grant DE-SC0020073, Heising-Simons Foundation and from NSF and OCE-1756272. DAS acknowledges support from U.K. NERC Grants NE/P011365/1, NE/T011920/1, and NERC Independent Research Fellowship NE/T011920/1. MW was supported by an appointment to the NASA Postdoctoral Program at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, administered by the Universities Space Research Association under contract with NASA. CSA would like to acknowledge Geocenter Denmark for support to the project “Upernavik Glacier.”

© The Author(s), 2022. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License. The definitive version was published in Slater, D., Carroll, D., Oliver, H., Hopwood, M., Straneo, F., Wood, M., Willis, J., & Morlighem, M. Characteristic depths, fluxes and timescales for Greenland’s tidewater glacier fjords from subglacial discharge‐driven upwelling during summer. Geophysical Research Letters, 49(10),(2022): e2021GL097081, https://doi.org/10.1029/2021gl097081., Greenland's glacial fjords are a key bottleneck in the earth system, regulating exchange of heat, freshwater and nutrients between the ice sheet and ocean and hosting societally important fisheries. We combine recent bathymetric, atmospheric, and oceanographic data with a buoyant plume model to show that summer subglacial discharge from 136 tidewater glaciers, amounting to 0.02 Sv of freshwater, drives 0.6–1.6 Sv of upwelling. Bathymetric analysis suggests that this is sufficient to renew most major fjords within a single summer, and that these fjords provide a path to the continental shelf that is deeper than 200 m for two-thirds of the glaciers. Our study provides a first pan-Greenland inventory of tidewater glacier fjords and quantifies regional and ice sheet-wide upwelling fluxes. This analysis provides important context for site-specific studies and is a step toward implementing fjord-scale heat, freshwater and nutrient fluxes in large-scale ice sheet and climate models., DAS acknowledges support from NERC Independent Research Fellowship NE/T011920/1. DAS and FS acknowledge support from NSF award 2020547. HO acknowledges support from a WHOI Postdoctoral Scholar award. MW and JKW performed this work at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, under contract with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.

Author Posting. © American Meteorological Society, 2021. This article is posted here by permission of American Meteorological Society for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Journal of the Atmospheric and Oceanic Technology 38(9), (2021): 1535–1550, https://doi.org/10.1175/JTECH-D-20-0176.s1., Monitoring the heat content variability of glacial fjords is crucial to understanding the effects of oceanic forcing on marine-terminating glaciers. A pressure-sensor-equipped inverted echo sounder (PIES) was deployed midfjord in Sermilik Fjord in southeast Greenland from August 2011 to September 2012 alongside a moored array of instruments recording temperature, conductivity, and velocity. Historical hydrography is used to quantify the relationship between acoustic travel time and the vertically averaged heat content, and a new method is developed for filtering acoustic return echoes in an ice-influenced environment. We show that PIES measurements, combined with a knowledge of the fjord’s two-layer density structure, can be used to reconstruct the thickness and temperature of the inflowing water. Additionally, we find that fjord–shelf exchange events are identifiable in the travel time record implying the PIES can be used to monitor fjord circulation. Finally, we show that PIES data can be combined with moored temperature records to derive the heat content of the upper layer of the fjord where moored instruments are at great risk of being damaged by transiting icebergs., FS and MA acknowledge funding from the Kerr Family Foundation and the Grossman Family Foundation through the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. MA is supported by a grant from the National Science Foundation Office of Polar Programs (1332911). FS and RS acknowledge support from NSF OCE-1657601 and from the Heising-Simons Foundation.

The subpolar North Atlantic is a site of significant carbon dioxide, oxygen, and heat exchange with the atmosphere. This exchange, which regulates transient climate change and prevents large-scale hypoxia throughout the North Atlantic, is thought to be mediated by vertical mixing in the ocean's surface mixed layer. Here we present observational evidence that waters deeper than the conventionally defined mixed layer are affected directly by atmospheric forcing. When northerly winds blow along the Irminger Sea's western boundary current, the Ekman response pushes denser water over lighter water and triggers slantwise convection. We estimate that this down-front wind forcing is four times stronger than air--sea heat flux buoyancy forcing and can mix waters to several times the conventionally defined mixed layer depth. Slantwise convection is not included in most large-scale ocean models, which likely limits their ability to accurately represent subpolar water mass transformations and deep ocean ventilation.

Fresh Arctic waters flowing into the Atlantic are thought to have two primary fates. They may be mixed into the deep ocean as part of the overturning circulation, or flow alongside regions of deep water formation without impacting overturning. Climate models suggest that as increasing amounts of fresh water enter the Atlantic, the overturning circulation will be disrupted, yet we lack an understanding of how much fresh water is mixed into the overturning circulation’s deep limb in the present day. To constrain these fresh water pathways, we build steady-state volume, salt, and heat budgets east of Greenland that are initialized with observations and closed using inverse methods. Fresh water sources are split into oceanic Polar Waters from the Arctic and surface fresh water fluxes, which include net precipitation, runoff, and ice melt, to examine how they imprint the circulation differently. We find that 65 mSv of the total 110 mSv of surface fresh water fluxes that enter our domain participate in the overturning circulation, as do 0.6 Sv of the total 1.2 Sv of Polar Waters that flow through Fram Strait. Based on these results, we hypothesize that the overturning circulation is more sensitive to future changes in Arctic fresh water outflow and precipitation, while Greenland runoff and iceberg melt are more likely to stay along the coast of Greenland.

© The Author(s), 2021. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License. The definitive version was published in Scambos, T., Straneo, F., & Tedesco, M. How fast is the Greenland ice sheet melting? Arctic Antarctic and Alpine Research, 53(1), (2021): 221–222, https://doi.org/10.1080/15230430.2021.1946241., THE ISSUE The Greenland Ice Sheet and the glacier-covered areas of Alaska and other Arctic lands are losing ice at an accelerating rate, contributing billions of tons of water to sea level rise. WHY IT MATTERS Ice loss from the ice sheets contributes directly to sea level rise. These losses are likely to increase rapidly as warming in the Arctic continues. Surface melt and runoff is now increasing more quickly than all other factors driving Greenland’s ice loss, although faster glacier outflow remains important. Increased ice loss from Alaska’s glaciers is also due mainly to surface melting. Given these trends, and the rapid warming in the Arctic (twice the global rate of warming), the Arctic is poised to lose ice even more rapidly and raise sea level. STATE OF KNOWLEDGE Since 2000, the net loss of ice from the Greenland Ice Sheet has increased five-fold, from 50 billion to about 250 billion tons per year1,2 (362 billion tons is equal to 1 mm in sea level rise). Ice losses in the Gulf of Alaska region have risen from about 40 to 70 billion tons per year3. These trends are confirmed by three independent satellite methods, using gravitational changes, elevation changes, and changes in the mass budget (the net difference between snowfall and the combination of glacier outflow and runoff)1. In total, the Arctic currently contributes approximately 350 billion tons (~1 mm) to sea level each year, primarily from Greenland, Alaska, and Arctic Canada. Recent measurements of the rate of sea level rise are 3.0 mm per year, with the additional rise coming from other glaciers and Antarctica (~0.4. mm) and expansion of the oceans due to warming (~1.7 mm)4. Slightly cooler summer seasons for Greenland in 2013 and 2014, and again in 2017 and 2018, temporarily reduced the rate of ice loss. Ocean temperatures cooled in some places along the western Greenland coast, slowing glacier outflow there5. However, strong melting in 2015, 2016 and 2019 again contributed large amounts of runoff, This work was supported by the Office of Polar Programs, National Science Foundation, and NSF’s Study of Environmental Arctic Change.

Author Posting. © American Meteorological Society, 2021. This article is posted here by permission of American Meteorological Society for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Journal of Physical Oceanography 51(3), (2021): 955–973, https://doi.org/10.1175/JPO-D-20-0240.1., Fresh Arctic waters flowing into the Atlantic are thought to have two primary fates. They may be mixed into the deep ocean as part of the overturning circulation, or flow alongside regions of deep water formation without impacting overturning. Climate models suggest that as increasing amounts of freshwater enter the Atlantic, the overturning circulation will be disrupted, yet we lack an understanding of how much freshwater is mixed into the overturning circulation’s deep limb in the present day. To constrain these freshwater pathways, we build steady-state volume, salt, and heat budgets east of Greenland that are initialized with observations and closed using inverse methods. Freshwater sources are split into oceanic Polar Waters from the Arctic and surface freshwater fluxes, which include net precipitation, runoff, and ice melt, to examine how they imprint the circulation differently. We find that 65 mSv (1 Sv ≡ 106 m3 s−1) of the total 110 mSv of surface freshwater fluxes that enter our domain participate in the overturning circulation, as do 0.6 Sv of the total 1.2 Sv of Polar Waters that flow through Fram Strait. Based on these results, we hypothesize that the overturning circulation is more sensitive to future changes in Arctic freshwater outflow and precipitation, while Greenland runoff and iceberg melt are more likely to stay along the coast of Greenland., We gratefully acknowledge the U.S. National Science Foundation: this work was supported by Grants OCE-1258823, OCE-1756272, OCE-1948335, and OCE-2038481. L.H.S. thanks the U.S. Norway Fulbright Foundation for the Norwegian Arctic Chair Grant 2019-20 that made the visit to Scripps Institution of Oceanography possible. N.P.H. acknowledges support by the U.K. Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) National Capability program CLASS (NE/R015953/1), and Grants U.K.-OSNAP (NE/K010875/1, NE/K010875/2) and U.K.-OSNAP Decade (NE/T00858X/1). We acknowledge the World Climate Research Programme, which, through its Working Group on Coupled Modelling, coordinated and promoted CMIP6.

© The Author(s), 2021. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License. The definitive version was published in Li, F., Lozier, M. S., Bacon, S., Bower, A. S., Cunningham, S. A., de Jong, M. F., DeYoung, B., Fraser, N., Fried, N., Han, G., Holliday, N. P., Holte, J., Houpert, L., Inall, M. E., Johns, W. E., Jones, S., Johnson, C., Karstensen, J., Le Bras, I. A., P. Lherminier, X. Lin, H. Mercier, M. Oltmanns, A. Pacini, T. Petit, R. S. Pickart, D. Rayner, F. Straneo, V. Thierry, M. Visbeck, I. Yashayaev & Zhou, C. Subpolar North Atlantic western boundary density anomalies and the Meridional Overturning Circulation. Nature Communications, 12(1), (2021): 3002, https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-021-23350-2., Changes in the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation, which have the potential to drive societally-important climate impacts, have traditionally been linked to the strength of deep water formation in the subpolar North Atlantic. Yet there is neither clear observational evidence nor agreement among models about how changes in deep water formation influence overturning. Here, we use data from a trans-basin mooring array (OSNAP—Overturning in the Subpolar North Atlantic Program) to show that winter convection during 2014–2018 in the interior basin had minimal impact on density changes in the deep western boundary currents in the subpolar basins. Contrary to previous modeling studies, we find no discernable relationship between western boundary changes and subpolar overturning variability over the observational time scales. Our results require a reconsideration of the notion of deep western boundary changes representing overturning characteristics, with implications for constraining the source of overturning variability within and downstream of the subpolar region., We acknowledge funding from the Physical Oceanography Program of the U.S. National Science Foundation (OCE-1259398, OCE-1756231, OCE-1948335); the U.K. Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) National Capability programs the Extended Ellett Line and CLASS (NE/R015953/1), and NERC grants UK-OSNAP (NE/K010875/1, NE/K010875/2, NE/K010700/1) and U.K. OSNAP Decade (NE/T00858X/1, NE/T008938/1). Additional support was received from the European Union 7th Framework Program (FP7 2007-2013) under grant 308299 (NACLIM), the Horizon 2020 research and innovation program under grants 727852 (Blue-Action), 862626 (EuroSea). We also acknowledge support from the Royal Netherlands Institute for Sea Research, the Surface Water and Ocean Topography-Canada (SWOT-C), Canadian Space Agency, the Aquatic Climate Change Adaptation Services Program (ACCASP), Fisheries and Oceans Canada, an Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) Discovery Grant, and from the China’s national key research and development projects (2016YFA0601803), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (41925025) and the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (201424001). Support for the 53°N array by the RACE program of the German Ministry BMBF is acknowledged, as is the contribution from Fisheries and Oceans Canada’s Atlantic Zone Monitoring Program.

Author Posting. © American Meteorological Society, 2021. This article is posted here by permission of American Meteorological Society for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Journal of Physical Oceanography 51(7), (2021): 2087–2102, https://doi.org/10.1175/JPO-D-20-0255.1., The boundary current system in the Labrador Sea plays an integral role in modulating convection in the interior basin. Four years of mooring data from the eastern Labrador Sea reveal persistent mesoscale variability in the West Greenland boundary current. Between 2014 and 2018, 197 middepth intensified cyclones were identified that passed the array near the 2000-m isobath. In this study, we quantify these features and show that they are the downstream manifestation of Denmark Strait Overflow Water (DSOW) cyclones. A composite cyclone is constructed revealing an average radius of 9 km, maximum azimuthal speed of 24 cm s−1, and a core propagation velocity of 27 cm s−1. The core propagation velocity is significantly smaller than upstream near Denmark Strait, allowing them to trap more water. The cyclones transport a 200-m-thick lens of dense water at the bottom of the water column and increase the transport of DSOW in the West Greenland boundary current by 17% relative to the background flow. Only a portion of the features generated at Denmark Strait make it to the Labrador Sea, implying that the remainder are shed into the interior Irminger Sea, are retroflected at Cape Farewell, or dissipate. A synoptic shipboard survey east of Cape Farewell, conducted in summer 2020, captured two of these features that shed further light on their structure and timing. This is the first time DSOW cyclones have been observed in the Labrador Sea—a discovery that could have important implications for interior stratification., A. P. and R. S. P. were funded by National Science Foundation Grants OCE-1259618 and OCE-1756361. I. L. B. and F. S. were funded by National Science Foundation Grants OCE-1258823 and OCE-1756272. N. P. H. was supported by the Natural Environment Research Council U.K. OSNAP program (NE/K010875/1 and NE/K010700/1). M. A. S. was supported by NSF Grants OCE-1558742 and OPP-1822334., 2021-12-08

Author Posting. © American Meteorological Society, 2020. This article is posted here by permission of American Meteorological Society for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Journal of Physical Oceanography 50(10), (2020): 2849-2871, https://doi.org/10.1175/JPO-D-20-0086.1., The structure, transport, and seasonal variability of the West Greenland boundary current system near Cape Farewell are investigated using a high-resolution mooring array deployed from 2014 to 2018. The boundary current system is comprised of three components: the West Greenland Coastal Current, which advects cold and fresh Upper Polar Water (UPW); the West Greenland Current, which transports warm and salty Irminger Water (IW) along the upper slope and UPW at the surface; and the Deep Western Boundary Current, which advects dense overflow waters. Labrador Sea Water (LSW) is prevalent at the seaward side of the array within an offshore recirculation gyre and at the base of the West Greenland Current. The 4-yr mean transport of the full boundary current system is 31.1 ± 7.4 Sv (1 Sv ≡ 106 m3 s−1), with no clear seasonal signal. However, the individual water mass components exhibit seasonal cycles in hydrographic properties and transport. LSW penetrates the boundary current locally, through entrainment/mixing from the adjacent recirculation gyre, and also enters the current upstream in the Irminger Sea. IW is modified through air–sea interaction during winter along the length of its trajectory around the Irminger Sea, which converts some of the water to LSW. This, together with the seasonal increase in LSW entering the current, results in an anticorrelation in transport between these two water masses. The seasonality in UPW transport can be explained by remote wind forcing and subsequent adjustment via coastal trapped waves. Our results provide the first quantitatively robust observational description of the boundary current in the eastern Labrador Sea., A.P., R.S.P., F.B., D.J.T., and A.L.R. were funded by Grants OCE-1259618 and OCE-1756361 from the National Science Foundation. I.L.B, F.S., and J.H. were supported by U.S. National Science Foundation Grants OCE-1258823 and OCE-1756272. Mooring data from MA2 was funded by the European Union 7th Framework Programme (FP7 2007-2013) under Grant 308299 (NACLIM) and the Horizon 2020 research and innovation program under Grant 727852 (Blue-Action). J.K. and M.O. acknowledge EU Horizon 2020 funding Grants 727852 (Blue-action) and 862626 (EuroSea) and from the German Ministry of Research and Education (RACE Program). G.W.K.M. acknowledges funding from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council.

Author Posting. © American Geophysical Union, 2020. This article is posted here by permission of American Geophysical Union for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Journal of Geophysical Research: Oceans 125(8), (2020): e2020JC016091, doi:10.1029/2020JC016091., The floating ice tongue of 79 North Glacier, a major outlet glacier of the Northeast Greenland Ice Stream, has thinned by 30% since 1999. Earlier studies have indicated that long‐term warming of Atlantic Intermediate Water (AIW) is likely driving increased basal melt, causing the observed thinning. Still, limited ocean measurements in 79 North Fjord beneath the ice tongue have made it difficult to test this hypothesis. Here we use data from an Ice Tethered Mooring (ITM) deployed in a rift in the ice tongue from August 2016 to July 2017 to show that the subannual AIW temperature variability is smaller than the observed interannual variability, supporting the conclusion that AIW has warmed over the period of ice tongue thinning. In July 2017, the AIW at 500 m depth in the ice tongue cavity reached a maximum recorded temperature of 1.5°C. Velocity measurements reveal weak tides and a mean overturning circulation, which is likely seasonally enhanced by subglacial runoff discharged at the grounding line. Deep inflow of AIW and shallow export of melt‐modified water persist throughout the record, indicating year‐round basal melting of the ice tongue. Comparison with a mooring outside of the cavity suggests a rapid exchange between the cavity and continental shelf. Warming observed during 2016–2017 is estimated to drive a 33 ± 20% increase in basal melt rate near the ice tongue terminus and a 14 ± 2% increase near the grounding line if sustained., Funding for the ITM was provided by the Grossman Family Foundation through the WHOI Development Office. M. R. L. is supported by a National Defense Science and Engineering Graduate Fellowship. N. L. B. is supported by a grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF OCE‐1536856)., 2021-02-10

© The Author(s), 2020. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License. The definitive version was published in De Andres, E., Slater, D. A., Otero, J., Das, S., Navarro, F., & Straneo, F. Surface emergence of glacial plumes determined by fjord stratification. Cryosphere, 14(6), (2020): 1951-1969, doi:10.5194/tc-14-1951-2020., Meltwater and sediment-laden plumes at tidewater glaciers, resulting from the localized subglacial discharge of surface melt, influence submarine melting of the glacier and the delivery of nutrients to the fjord's surface waters. It is usually assumed that increased subglacial discharge will promote the surfacing of these plumes. Here, at a western Greenland tidewater glacier, we investigate the counterintuitive observation of a non-surfacing plume in July 2012 (a year of record surface melting) compared to the surfacing of the plume in July 2013 (an average melt year). We combine oceanographic observations, subglacial discharge estimates and an idealized plume model to explain the observed plumes' behavior and evaluate the relative impact of fjord stratification and subglacial discharge on plume dynamics. We find that increased fjord stratification prevented the plume from surfacing in 2012, show that the fjord was more stratified in 2012 due to increased freshwater content and speculate that this arose from an accumulation of ice sheet surface meltwater in the fjord in this record melt year. By developing theoretical scalings, we show that fjord stratification in general exerts a dominant control on plume vertical extent (and thus surface expression), so that studies using plume surface expression as a means of diagnosing variability in glacial processes should account for possible changes in stratification. We introduce the idea that, despite projections of increased surface melting over Greenland, the appearance of plumes at the fjord surface could in the future become less common if the increased freshwater acts to stratify fjords around the Greenland ice sheet. We discuss the implications of our findings for nutrient fluxes, trapping of atmospheric CO2 and the properties of water exported from Greenland's fjords., This research has been supported by the Ministerio de Educación, Cultura y Deporte (grant no. FPU14/04109), the National Science Foundation (grant no. 1418256), the Ministerio de Economía, Industria y Competitividad, Gobierno de España (grant no. CTM2017-84441-R), and the Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Programme (grant no. 727890).

The Greenland ice sheet is one of the largest contributors to global mean sea-level rise today and is expected to continue to lose mass as the Arctic continues to warm. The two predominant mass loss mechanisms are increased surface meltwater run-off and mass loss associated with the retreat of marine-terminating outlet glaciers. In this paper we use a large ensemble of Greenland ice sheet models forced by output from a representative subset of the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP5) global climate models to project ice sheet changes and sea-level rise contributions over the 21st century. The simulations are part of the Ice Sheet Model Intercomparison Project for CMIP6 (ISMIP6). We estimate the sea-level contribution together with uncertainties due to future climate forcing, ice sheet model formulations and ocean forcing for the two greenhouse gas concentration scenarios RCP8.5 and RCP2.6. The results indicate that the Greenland ice sheet will continue to lose mass in both scenarios until 2100, with contributions of 90±50 and 32±17 mm to sea-level rise for RCP8.5 and RCP2.6, respectively. The largest mass loss is expected from the south-west of Greenland, which is governed by surface mass balance changes, continuing what is already observed today. Because the contributions are calculated against an unforced control experiment, these numbers do not include any committed mass loss, i.e. mass loss that would occur over the coming century if the climate forcing remained constant. Under RCP8.5 forcing, ice sheet model uncertainty explains an ensemble spread of 40 mm, while climate model uncertainty and ocean forcing uncertainty account for a spread of 36 and 19 mm, respectively. Apart from those formally derived uncertainty ranges, the largest gap in our knowledge is about the physical understanding and implementation of the calving process, i.e. the interaction of the ice sheet with the ocean.

© The Author(s), 2019. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License. The definitive version was published in Wagner, T. J. W., Straneo, F., Richards, C. G., Slater, D. A., Stevens, L. A., Das, S. B., & Singh, H. Large spatial variations in the flux balance along the front of a Greenland tidewater glacier. Cryosphere, 13(3), (2019):911-925, doi:10.5194/tc-13-911-2019., The frontal flux balance of a medium-sized tidewater glacier in western Greenland in the summer is assessed by quantifying the individual components (ice flux, retreat, calving, and submarine melting) through a combination of data and models. Ice flux and retreat are obtained from satellite data. Submarine melting is derived using a high-resolution ocean model informed by near-ice observations, and calving is estimated using a record of calving events along the ice front. All terms exhibit large spatial variability along the ∼5 km wide ice front. It is found that submarine melting accounts for much of the frontal ablation in small regions where two subglacial discharge plumes emerge at the ice front. Away from the subglacial plumes, the estimated melting accounts for a small fraction of frontal ablation. Glacier-wide, these estimates suggest that mass loss is largely controlled by calving. This result, however, is at odds with the limited presence of icebergs at this calving front – suggesting that melt rates in regions outside of the subglacial plumes may be underestimated. Finally, we argue that localized melt incisions into the glacier front can be significant drivers of calving. Our results suggest a complex interplay of melting and calving marked by high spatial variability along the glacier front., We acknowledge support from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution Ocean and Climate Change Institute Arctic Research Initiative, and NSF OPP-1418256 and OPP-1743693, to Fiamma Straneo and Sarah B. Das. Till J. W. Wagner was further supported by NSF OPP award 1744835. Geospatial support for this work was provided by the Polar Geospatial Center under NSF OPP awards 1043681 and 1559691. DEMs provided by the Polar Geospatial Center under NSF OPP awards 1043681, 1559691, and 1542736. Donald A. Slater acknowledges the support of Scottish Alliance for Geoscience, Environment and Society early-career research exchange funding.

Author Posting. © American Geophysical Union, 2018. This article is posted here by permission of American Geophysical Union for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in in Geophysical Research Letters, 45(22), (2018): 12350-12358. doi: 10.1029/2018GL080763., Recent acceleration of Greenland's ocean‐terminating glaciers has substantially amplified the ice sheet's contribution to global sea level. Increased oceanic melting of these tidewater glaciers is widely cited as the likely trigger, and is thought to be highest within vigorous plumes driven by freshwater drainage from beneath glaciers. Yet melting of the larger part of calving fronts outside of plumes remains largely unstudied. Here we combine ocean observations collected within 100 m of a tidewater glacier with a numerical model to show that unlike previously assumed, plumes drive an energetic fjord‐wide circulation which enhances melting along the entire calving front. Compared to estimates of melting within plumes alone, this fjord‐wide circulation effectively doubles the glacier‐wide melt rate, and through shaping the calving front has a potential dynamic impact on calving. Our results suggest that melting driven by fjord‐scale circulation should be considered in process‐based projections of Greenland's sea level contribution., Support was provided by the National Science Foundation (NSF) through PLR‐1418256 and PLR‐1744835, and through Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) Ocean and Climate Change Institute (OCCI) and the Clark Foundation. This work was also supported by a UK Natural Environmental Research Council (NERC) PhD studentship (NE/L501566/1) and Scottish Alliance for Geoscience, Environment & Society (SAGES) early career research exchange funding to D. A. S. We thank Hanumant Singh, Laura Stevens, Ken Mankoff, Rebecca Jackson, and Jeff Pietro for useful discussions and data collection., 2019-05-15

The effect of the North Atlantic Ocean on the Greenland Ice Sheet through submarine melting of Greenland's tidewater glacier calving fronts is thought to be a key driver of widespread glacier retreat, dynamic mass loss and sea level contribution from the ice sheet. Despite its critical importance, problems of process complexity and scale hinder efforts to represent the influence of submarine melting in ice-sheet-scale models. Here we propose parameterizing tidewater glacier terminus position as a simple linear function of submarine melting, with submarine melting in turn estimated as a function of subglacial discharge and ocean temperature. The relationship is tested, calibrated and validated using datasets of terminus position, subglacial discharge and ocean temperature covering the full ice sheet and surrounding ocean from the period 1960-2018. We demonstrate a statistically significant link between multi-decadal tidewater glacier terminus position change and submarine melting and show that the proposed parameterization has predictive power when considering a population of glaciers. An illustrative 21st century projection is considered, suggesting that tidewater glaciers in Greenland will undergo little further retreat in a low-emission RCP2.6 scenario. In contrast, a high-emission RCP8.5 scenario results in a median retreat of 4.2 km, with a quarter of tidewater glaciers experiencing retreat exceeding 10 km. Our study provides a long-term and ice-sheet-wide assessment of the sensitivity of tidewater glaciers to submarine melting and proposes a practical and empirically validated means of incorporating ocean forcing into models of the Greenland ice sheet., SCOPUS: ar.j, info:eu-repo/semantics/published