Export of ice sheet meltwater from Upernavik Fjord,West Greenland ...

• Main Author: Wood, Michael H
• Format: Dataset
• Language: unknown
• Published: Root 2023
• Subjects: Greenland; Ice Sheet; North Atlantic; Upernavik
• Online Access: https://dx.doi.org/10.48577/jpl.ut0u0t; https://dataverse.jpl.nasa.gov/citation?persistentId=doi:10.48577/jpl.UT0U0T

Meltwater from Greenland is an important freshwater source for the North Atlantic Ocean, released into the ocean at the head of fjords in the formof runoff, submarine melt and icebergs. The meltwater release gives rise to complex in-fjord transformations that result in its dilution through mixing with other water masses. The transformed waters, which contain the meltwater, are exported from thefjords as a new water mass “Glacially Modified Water” (GMW). Here we use summer hydrographic data collected from 2013 to 2019 in Upernavik, a major glacial fjord in northwest Greenland, to describe the water masses that flow into the fjord from the shelf and the exported GMWs. Using an Optimum Multi-Parameter technique across multiple years we then show that GMW is composed of 57.8 8.1% Atlantic Water, 41.0 8.3% Polar Water, 1.0 0.1% subglacial discharge and 0.2 0.2% submarine meltwater. We show that the GMW fractional composition cannot be described by buoyant plume theory alone since it includes lateral mixing within ...