2025/03/07 by Liyun Zhao, Ran Luo, Michael Wolovick +2 · 1 voice · 3 citations
Earth and Planetary Sciences · Medicine · #Arctic and Antarctic ice dynamics #Cryosphere #Cryospheric studies and observations #Geography #Geology #Geomorphology #Glacier #Glacier mass balance #Glacier morphology #Greenland ice sheet #Ice sheet #Ice stream #Oceanography #Physical geography #Sea ice #Winter Sports Injuries and Performance
paper · pdf · doi:10.1038/s43247-025-02120-8
published in Communications Earth & Environment 6(1) (Nature Portfolio)
openalex publication_date 2025/03/07 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/01
Active conservation of an ice sheet seeks to reduce ice sheet mass loss and sea level rise. Here we explore the response of Sermeq Kujalleq in Greenland to limiting warm water inflow to the fjord it terminates by raising the sill by an artificial barrier at its mouth. We asynchronously couple an ice sheet model with a fjord model, and simulate glacier evolution with varying climate scenarios from the year 2020 to 2100. The tallest barrier cools the fjord water and reduces melt at the ice front. But this has minor impacts on glacier retreat under SSP5-8.5 and SSP2-4.5. Cooling the atmospheric forcing to 1990s levels reduces glacier retreat, but even reducing water temperatures with a barrier cannot stabilize the glacier. The glacier seems to be in an unstoppable phase of marine ice sheet instability on a rapidly deepening retrograde sloping bed and in water much deeper than in 2000s. Asynchronously coupled ice sheet and fjord modelling suggests that raising the natural sill in Jakobshaven fjord with an artificial barrier could cool the fjord water but not by enough to offset atmospheric forcing under climate change scenarios