Greenland Ice Cap Water:Technical Report on five potential locations for meltwater export for the 2nd licensing round

• Main Authors: Ahlstrøm, Andreas P., Albers, Christian N., Kjeldsen, Kristian K., Johnsen, Anders R., Larsen, Signe H., Lisager, Peter, Nauta, Martin, Andersen, Signe B., Andresen, Camilla S., Fausto, Robert, Hasholt, Bent, Solgaard, Anne M.
• Format: Book
• Language: English
• Published: Danmarks og Grønlands Geologiske Undersøgelse 2019
• Subjects: Greenland; Ice cap; Ice Sheet; Sea ice
• Online Access: https://curis.ku.dk/portal/da/publications/greenland-ice-cap-water(31155bfa-0dd8-4d39-a0ec-1635e5297ec0).html; https://doi.org/10.22008/gpub/32639; https://curis.ku.dk/ws/files/341058747/Greenlandic_Ice_Cap_Water.pdf

This report contains information on five selected locations that may be utilized for industrial collection of drinking water, and provides the technical background for the second licensing round of the Greenland Government in its Strategy for Export of Ice and Water. This report is not aimed at addressing any technical or engineering questions posed by the locations or water treatment, but only concerns the natural environment and the quality of the water as it was sampled. A prerequisite in the investigation has been that the water should be at least partly derived from meltwater originating either from the Greenland Ice Sheet or from local glaciers and ice caps. The identification and selection process for locations was de-scribed in detail in Ahlstrøm et al. (2018) and updated in Kjeldsen et al. (2019). Locations are defined as outlets of a significant meltwater river to accessible fjords in the southwestern part of Greenland, to minimize potential sea ice and iceberg interference. Catchments for each location or river outlet were derived employing advanced hydrological methods, using the most recent elevation models available. The five selected locations represent different catchment sizes with varying amounts of discharge, ranging from roughly 290,000 million litres per year, down to slightly over 10,000 million litres per year. The rivers at all locations are, on average, discharging water from May to November with the vast majority of water discharging in the period June-September. A comparison between modelled discharge for the catchments for the two periods 1980-1991 and 2006-2017, showed an increase in the discharge at all sites except one, which was stable. A similar method was also used to examine the change in discharge over the last few decades, showing a promising overall melt increase of more than 50 % for the region. The five selected locations were visited by boat to sample the water and collect additional data. The field visits were conducted in June and September in either 2018 or 2019, to ...