Mechanisms for wintertime fjord-shelf heat exchange in Greenland and Svalbard

Abstract

No region has felt the effects of global climate change more acutely than the cryosphere, which has changed at an unprecedented rate in the past two decades. The scientific consensus is that these changes are driven largely by increasing ocean heat content at high latitudes. In southeast Greenland, acceleration and retreat of the marine-terminating glaciers contributes significantly towards global sea level rise. Circulation in the fjords which accommodate these glaciers is thought to be driven both by freshwater input and by barrier wind-driven shelf exchange. Due to a scarcity of data, particularly from winter, the balance between these two mechanisms is not fully understood. In Svalbard, increasing water temperature has decimated sea ice cover in many of the fjords, and had substantial implications for the local ecosystem. While there is a relatively comprehensive literature on shelf exchange mechanisms in Svalbard fjords, questions remain over how the internal circulation interacts with exchange mechanisms. The region shares a similar underwater topography and oceanographic setting with southeast Greenland, with marine-terminating glaciers in close proximity to warm Atlantic waters, and results from Svalbard can hence be used to inform studies of high-latitude fjord-shelf exchange in a broader context. A realistic numerical model was constructed with the aim of better understanding the interaction between Kangerdlugssuaq Fjord and the adjacent continental shelf, and quantifying heat exchange during winter. The model was initially run in an idealised configuration with winter climatological forcing fields, incorporating a parameterisation for melting at the terminus, and used to test the impact of barrier wind events. The Earth's rotation played a crucial role in the nature of the circulation and exchange in the fjord, with inflow on the right (looking up-fjord) and outflow on the left. While the heat delivered into the fjord-mouth was smaller than that observed in summer, the background internal circulation was found to efficiently distribute waters through the fjord without external forcing, and the heat delivered to the glacier terminus was comparable to summer values. Barrier winds were found to excite coastally-trapped internal waves which propagated into the fjord along the right-hand side. The process was capable of doubling the heat delivery. The process also enhanced the background circulation, likely via Stokes' Drift. The model was then adapted to simulate winter 2007-08 under historical forcing conditions. Time series of glacial melt rate, as well as the heat flux through fjord cross-sections, were constructed and compared to the variability in wind forcing. Long periods of moderate wind stress were found to induce greatly enhanced heat flux towards the ice sheet, while short, strong gusts were found to have little influence, suggesting that the timescale over which the shelf wind field varies is a key parameter in dictating wintertime heat delivery from the ocean to the Greenland Ice Sheet. An underwater glider was deployed to Isfjorden, a large fjord system in Svalbard, to measure the temperature, salinity and depth-averaged currents over the course of November 2014. Like in Kangerdlugssuaq, the circulation in Isfjorden was found to be heavily influenced by the Earth's rotation and by wind activity both locally and on the shelf. The combination of hydrography and high-resolution velocity data provided new insights, suggesting that the approach will be useful for studying high-latitude fjords in the future.