Seasonal and interannual variability of freshwater sources for Greenland's fjords

Freshwater fluxes entering fjords are important for ice-ocean interactions,  circulation in Greenland's fjords, and the use of freshwater forcing in ocean modelling. We study the timing, source type, and magnitude of freshwater fluxes and their temporal and spatial variability using statistically downscaled output from regional climate models for the mass fluxes, process-based estimates of basal melt and observational data for solid ice discharge. For seven climatologically distinct regions, we estimate the absolute and relative contribution of runoff from the Greenland Ice Sheet, ice caps, and tundra, solid ice discharge and precipitation directly falling into fjords between 1940 and 2023. The relative contribution of freshwater sources varies between months and regions, with distinct differences between the runoff-dominated southwest, and the solid-ice-discharge-dominated southeast.