Emerging impacts of enhanced Greenland melting on Labrador Sea dynamics

• Main Authors: Schiller-Weiss, Ilana, Martin, Torge, Schwarzkopf, Franziska U.
• Format: Other/Unknown Material
• Language: unknown
• Published: Authorea, Inc. 2024
• Subjects: Greenland; Irminger Sea; Ice Sheet; Labrador Sea; North Atlantic
• Online Access: http://dx.doi.org/10.22541/essoar.171017142.24242706/v1

Freshwater input from Greenland ice sheet melt has been increasing in the past decades from warming temperatures. To identify the impacts from enhanced meltwater input into the subpolar North Atlantic from 1997–2021, we use output from two nearly identical simulations in the eddy-rich model VIKING20X (1/20°) only differing in the freshwater input from Greenland: one with realistic interannually varying runoff increasing in the early 2000s and the other with climatologically (1961–2000) continued runoff. The majority of the additional freshwater remains within the boundary current enhancing the density gradient towards the warm and salty interior waters yielding increased current velocities. The accelerated boundary current shows a tendency towards eddy shedding into the Labrador Sea interior. Further, the experiments allow to attribute higher stratification and shallower mixed layers southwest of Greenland and deeper mixed layers in the Irminger Sea, particularly in 2015–2018, to the runoff increase in the early 2000s.