Narwhals Reveal Warm Atlantic Waters Reaching Greenland’s Glaciers, Raising Climate Concerns
Six tagged narwhals collected more than 2,000 temperature and salinity readings, revealing warm Atlantic water reaching glacier fronts and speeding ice loss.
- On Wednesday, researchers published a study in Science Advances detailing how they equipped six narwhals with satellite transmitters to monitor remote East Greenland waters.
- Scientists turned to narwhals because traditional ship-based research is costly and dangerous, blocked by thick ice; the whales perform deep dives up to 2,000m to sample entire water columns.
- The study revealed "Atlantification," where warm, salty Atlantic water pushes into Arctic seas, with sensors detecting this water 350 kilometers inland in the Scoresby Sound fjord complex.
- Helen Coxall, a professor of marine micropaleontology at Stockholm University, noted the narwhals provided "close to the same number of analyses in three years that humans collected in the past 130 years."
- Mads Peter Heide-Jorgensen, first author at the Greenland Institute of Natural Resources, noted this study "is just a small piece in the big picture" of North Atlantic ocean processes critical to climate prediction.
12 Articles
12 Articles
In hard-to-reach Arctic waters, this cetacean also known as the "Sea Unicorn" helps researchers to collect essential data on temperature and salinity. Six narwhals, equipped with sensors after a brief capture, contributed to a climate study published on Wednesday in the journal Science Advances. While covering their occupations, these "atypical collaborators" carried out between 2017 and 2020 more than 2,000 surveys in remote waters of eastern G…
Narwhals are helping scientists map warm water hidden in Greenland’s fjords
You might be familiar with the narwhal – otherwise known as the “unicorn of the sea”. The whale species, with their iconic spiral tusks that can extend up to three metres long, live year-round in Arctic waters across Canada, Greenland and Russia. They attract committed tourists determined to see and photograph them in the wild, where, if lucky, they can be observed gathering and feeding in large groups. Between 2017 and 2019, a group of scientis…
The study points out that the melting of glacials is accelerating in its depths.
Narwhals help researchers uncover unique data from the deepest East Greenland fjords
They live in some of the most inaccessible waters on Earth, where ocean temperatures hover around freezing. Because they move through areas that humans rarely reach, they have been able to help researchers with a special task.
Coverage Details
Bias Distribution
- 56% of the sources are Center
Factuality
To view factuality data please Upgrade to Premium
