A team of researchers is launching a scientific expedition to Greenland to advance understanding of how the region’s rapidly decaying ice sheet may affect global climate systems, including UK weather systems.
The Royal Research Ship (RRS) David Attenborough will make its first trip to the Arctic on Friday, led by an interdisciplinary team of 40 scientists and support staff from worldwide research institutes including the British Antarctic Survey (BAS).
The polar research vessel will embark on the six-week mission as part of the Kang-Glac project to study glaciers and life in coastal waters around Greenland – one of the areas on Earth most affected by climate change.
BAS said warm Atlantic waters moving through fjords eventually meet the ice fronts of marine-terminating glaciers, increasing melting and causing icebergs to break off.
In turn, the injection of increased fresh meltwater into the ocean is altering both ocean currents and marine ecosystems around Greenland and farther afield in the North Atlantic, with potential effects on UK weather systems.
Dr Kelly Hogan, BAS marine geophysicist and project co-lead, said: “Our expedition is extremely timely as we are seeing every day in the news how the Arctic is changing, and we know there will be knock-on effects for the rest of the planet.
“We need to understand how the Greenland Ice Sheet is likely to decay over the coming decades to centuries, and what the subsequent effects will be on both ocean currents and marine food webs.
“This is now urgent information for us to gather so policymakers can understand what will happen in the North Atlantic and set out appropriate adaptation and mitigation plans.”
The team will focus on key sites close to Kangerlussuaq Fjord, aiming to determine the intricate processes driving changes to the waters by studying what is happening now and during warm climatic periods in the past, BAS said.
It added that researchers can help anticipate future ice-ocean-marine ecosystem changes by extending the modern observational record back through the last 11,700 years – a period known as the Holocene.
While some records of Holocene iceberg calving and warm water inflows exist around Greenland, records of how glaciers then decay and the effects on marine productivity over many decades are lacking.
Professor Colm O’Cofaigh, a glacial and marine geologist from the Department of Geography at Durham University, and project co-lead, said: “Understanding the Holocene record of Greenland Ice Sheet change and the role of the ocean thereon is crucial for placing current observations of ice and ocean change into their longer-term context and for underpinning predictions of future change.
“The range of tools to be deployed from the RRS Sir David Attenborough during the Kang-Glac cruise provides an unprecedented opportunity to assess this change over the last 11,700 years.”
The mix of oceanographers, biologists and geologists will collectively use a range of instruments to retrieve samples from rocks on land, from the ocean and from the seafloor to gain a comprehensive picture of this region, and its current and potential future response to environmental change.
Using state-of-the-art capabilities of the RRS Sir David Attenborough and deploying advanced underwater robotics such as the Gavia, operated by the Scottish Association for Marine Science (SAMS), the team will investigate modern interactions between meltwater expelled from glaciers and the inflowing warm ocean waters, as well as how this affects primary productivity in Greenland’s fjords and coastal seas.
Helicopters will also allow researchers to collect terrestrial rock samples.
The marine sediment cores from the seafloor and terrestrial rock samples will reveal how glacier size, ocean temperatures and carbon storage at the seafloor changed during the Holocene, BAS said.
