Edinburgh scientist part of race to understand Greenland-North Atlantic climate tipping point

Climate tipping points are critical, often irreversible thresholds in Earth’s systems – such as ice sheets, ocean circulation and ecosystems – where a small temperature increase causes large-scale, self-perpetuating changes.

Dr Donald Slater, glaciologist within the School of GeoSciences is a member of the GIANT (Greenland Ice sheet to AtlaNtic Tipping points) project, a large five-year international collaboration of 17 partners led by the British Antarctic Survey (BAS) and funded by the Advanced Research and Invention Agency (ARIA).

Through GIANT, researchers hope to understand how much meltwater is released from Greenland’s fjord glaciers, how it enters the North Atlantic Ocean and how this process influences ocean circulation and the global climate system.

Despite the implications for lives and livelihoods around the world, scientists currently don’t have a clear picture of how Greenland’s fjord glaciers interact with the surrounding ocean, and the 200 or so narrow fjords have so far been impossible to capture in global computer models.

To gather unprecedented observations this summer, researchers will head to Greenland to deploy a sophisticated suite of technologies, including airborne drones, autonomous marine robots, satellites and instruments embedded directly into glacier ice.

This coordinated observing system will allow researchers to study glacier behaviour on all scales, from individual cracks in the ice all the way up to the flow of meltwater and icebergs into the North Atlantic. This data collection will feed directly into multiple computer models boosted by both machine learning and AI.

A key strength of the GIANT project is that its computer modelling work will run in parallel with observational and field data collection. Existing large-scale climate models, including the UK Earth System Model (UKESM), currently omit or misrepresent key processes occurring where Greenland’s glaciers meet the ocean. GIANT will run a hierarchy of computer simulations of glaciers and fjords, at different scales, with the aim of incorporating fjords into the UKESM. By the end of the project, the new observations will allow us to build in everything from ice cracking and calving to the export of freshwater into the North Atlantic.

As a result scientists will incorporate Greenland’s fjords into the UK’s main climate model and alongside climate modelling will develop a prototype Early Warning System that could provide advance notice of rapid glacier change.

This online system will combine satellite observations, field data, artificial intelligence and statistical glacier modelling to predict when ice loss into the North Atlantic might suddenly increase. The long-term vision is to create an operational early warning system for Greenland’s glaciers – one capable of flagging heightened risk of abrupt change.

The implications of Greenland’s melting glaciers extend far beyond the local people who live there. Locally, glacier collapse and retreat mean that fjords are freezing over later each year, and coastal communities can no longer rely on ice fishing for their livelihoods. Globally, the flow of freshwater into the North Atlantic could disrupt ocean circulation patterns that help regulate Europe’s climate and weather, while also contributing to global sea-level rise.

By working towards an Early Warning System, researchers hope they can provide crucial data to help governments prepare and adapt for the consequences of the planet’s changing climate.

Related links

Find out more about the project on the GIANT website