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Underwater Fiber-Optic Sensors Reveal Waves Driving Greenland Glacier Melt
Fiber-optic sensing captured iceberg calving events every few hours, revealing how underwater waves accelerate glacier melt and alter fjord circulation, increasing Greenland ice loss over 27 years.
- An international team led by the University of Zurich and the University of Washington used a 10-kilometer fiber-optic cable in South Greenland’s Sermiat fjord to measure how falling ice drives glacial melt mixing with warmer seawater.
- In response to accelerated cryospheric change, scientists have documented 27 years of glacier retreat and turned to fiber sensing to study calving.
- The fiber sensing recorded internal waves as tall as skyscrapers and seafloor currents between 5 and 20 centimeters per second flowing past the cable segments.
- Researchers found that iceberg-induced currents modulate heat transport toward the glacier terminus, influencing submarine melting rates, and dynamically adjust the thermal environment, potentially accelerating glacier retreat.
- With these insights, scientists can better predict glacier dynamics in a warming climate, as fiber-optic seafloor sensing promises to improve ice-ocean interaction models and refine sea-level rise projections.
17 Articles
17 Articles
Fibre-optic cables reveal iceberg's role in glacier loss
The calving front of Eqalorutsit Kangilliit Sermiat in South Greenland. Researchers deployed the fiber optic cable several hundred meters from the glacier’s mouth. Credit: Dominik Gräff/University of Washington As glaciers meet the sea and melt, massive blocks of ice ‘calve’ away and crash into the ocean. These awesome displays send tsunami-sized waves across the surface and leave powerful wakes as the ice bergs drift away. Filling gaps in scien…
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nationaltribune.com.au‘Revolutionary’ seafloor fiber sensing reveals how falling ice drives glacial retreat in Greenland
A team led by researchers from the University of Washington used a fiber-optic cable to capture calving dynamics across the fjord of the Eqalorutsit Kangilliit Sermiat glacier in South Greenland. Data collected from the cable allowed them to document — without getting too close — one of the key processes that is accelerating the rate of glacial mass loss and in turn, threatening the stability of ice sheets, with consequences for…
Seafloor fiber sensing reveals how falling ice drives glacial retreat in Greenland
As glaciers melt, huge chunks of ice break free and splash into the sea, generating tsunami-sized waves and leaving behind a powerful wake as they drift away. This process, called calving, is important for researchers to understand. But the front of a glacier is a dangerous place for data collection.
Calving-driven fjord dynamics resolved by seafloor fibre sensing
Interactions between melting ice and a warming ocean drive the present-day retreat of tidewater glaciers of Greenland1–3, with consequences for both sea level rise4 and the global climate system5. Controlling glacier frontal ablation, these ice–ocean interactions involve chains of small-scale processes that link glacier calving—the detachment of icebergs6—and submarine melt to the broader fjord dynamics7,8. However, understanding these processes…
Seafloor Fiber Reveals Fjord Calving Dynamics
In the remote and frigid fjords where glaciers meet the sea, a silent, dynamic interplay unfolds beneath the icy waters — one that has long eluded precise observation. Recent breakthroughs using seafloor fiber-optic sensing technology are now illuminating the hidden forces at work, providing unprecedented insights into iceberg calving and the ensuing fjord dynamics. These […]
Fatal feedback: When huge icebergs break off from the vertical front of a glacier, this has an unrecognized result. Because the enormous force of the impact causes huge waves hidden under the water surface, like measurements with a fiber optic cable at the bottom of the sea reveal. These waves mix the seawater and bring warm water to the glacier front. As a result, the ice masses defrost even faster, so the team in "Nature". When glaciers melt, …
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