Sediment discharge from Greenland’s marine-terminating glaciers is linked with surface melt

Publikation: Bidrag til tidsskriftTidsskriftartikelForskningfagfællebedømt

Dokumenter

  • Fulltext

    Forlagets udgivne version, 1,61 MB, PDF-dokument

Sediment discharged from the Greenland Ice Sheet delivers nutrients to marine ecosystems around Greenland and shapes seafloor habitats. Current estimates of the total sediment flux are constrained by observations from land-terminating glaciers only. Addressing this gap, our study presents a budget derived from observations at 30 marine-margin locations. Analyzing sediment cores from nine glaciated fjords, we assess spatial deposition since 1950. A significant correlation is established between mass accumulation rates, normalized by surface runoff, and distance down-fjord. This enables calculating annual sediment flux at any fjord point based on nearby marine-terminating outlet glacier melt data. Findings reveal a total annual sediment flux of 1.324 + /− 0.79 Gt yr-1 over the period 2010-2020 from all marine-terminating glaciers to the fjords. These estimates are valuable for studies aiming to understand the basal ice sheet conditions and for studies predicting ecosystem changes in Greenland’s fjords and offshore areas as the ice sheet melts and sediment discharge increase.

OriginalsprogEngelsk
Artikelnummer1332
TidsskriftNature Communications
Vol/bind15
Antal sider10
ISSN2041-1723
DOI
StatusUdgivet - 2024

Bibliografisk note

Funding Information:
C.S.A. acknowledges funding from the Independent Research Fund Denmark (0217-00244B), the Research Council of Norway (NFR 324520) and the VILLUM Foundation (YIP 10100). F.S. acknowledges funding from NSF (grants 2020547 and 2127241). N.B.K. acknowledges funding from VILLUM Foundation (40858) and from PROMICE, which is funded by the Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland (GEUS) and the Danish Ministry of Climate, Energy and Utilities under the Danish Cooperation for Environment in the Arctic (DANCEA) and is conducted in collaboration with DTU Space (Technical University of Denmark) and Asiaq, Greenland.

Publisher Copyright:
© The Author(s) 2024.

ID: 384260741