Early Results from KANG-GLAC: A Project to Understand Holocene Ice Sheet-Ocean Interaction and Marine Productivity in SE Greenland

So far, melting of the Greenland Ice Sheet (GrIS) has been the biggest contributor from the Earth’s cryosphere to global sea-level rise. Major uncertainties remain about how oceanic heat is transported across the shelf and through the fjords to the faces of marine-terminating glaciers, and how this affects rates of ice melt and calving. In turn, the increasing supply of meltwater and nutrients to the ocean around Greenland is impacting marine ecosystems as primary productivity rises,  subsequently increasing the potential for  carbon to be buried as “blue carbon” in Greenland’s fjords as warming continues. In July-August 2024, the UK-funded KANG-GLAC project completed a 40-day multidisciplinary research cruise to SE Greenland where the 40-strong scientific party made a suite of integrated geological, ocean and biological observations. The main aims of the project are two-fold. First, it aims to better understand how marine-terminating glaciers respond to oceanic heat on longer timescales (decades to centuries) by reconstructing glacier and ice-sheet behaviour during the Holocene and in particular during the climatic warm period of the Holocene Thermal Maximum. Second, the project will quantify nutrient cycling in the water column and uppermost seafloor sediments in order to improve our knowledge of  marine ecosystem response to meltwater supply from the GrIS.  The cruise on the UK’s premier polar research vessel, the RRS Sir David Attenborough, is the start of a 3.5 year project. Here, we will present an overview of our field observations in this past-to-future project and outline the plans for future data-driven modelling of the Greenland Ice Sheet.