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Abstract:
Increased ocean-driven melting of Greenland’s marine terminating glaciers is identified as a trigger of glacier retreat and dynamic ice loss from the ice sheet over the last few decades. The increasing melt rates, in turn, have been loosely attributed to a warming of the North Atlantic’s subpolar gyre during a negative phase of the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO). Limited data records from the fjords, however, mean that this hypothesis is largely untested. Here we use a 12 year record of properties from Sermilik Fjord, SE Greenland, and the nearby shelf, combined with historical ocean and atmosphere, and remote sensing data, to show that property changes inside the fjord are not simply related to the heat content of the North Atlantic’s subpolar gyre or the NAO phase. Instead, we show that fjord properties are directly related to properties on the nearby continental shelf which, in turn, vary as a result of the regional wind-stress and export from the Arctic Ocean. The implication of these findings for reconstructing the variability of melt rates at the glaciers’ margins back in time will be discussed.
