Seasonal icings reveal subsurface water drainage of a Greenland Ice Sheet outlet glacier

Abstract

Abstract. In many glacial settings, winter outflows of proglacial water create stratified domed ice structures on glacial forefields. These structures, called naledi, provide an opportunity to characterise the solute fluxes of hydrological systems in winter which are poorly constrained compared to summer outflows which are dominated by supraglacial meltwater input. To characterise the different hydrological systems feeding naledi and provide conceptual models of their formation, we sampled 12 overwinter naledi and 4 supercooled summer ice accumulations (accreted ice) from the forefield of Isunnguata Sermia, a western outlet glacier of the Greenland Ice Sheet, during four field campaigns. Major ions and stable water isotopes reveal complex geochemical signatures, where the composition of successive naled layers reveal fluctuations in water source and transport throughout winter. In comparison, core analysis of summer accreted ice shows uniform geochemistry throughout, suggesting freeze-on of water from one single source in quick discrete events. These findings are supported by Electrical Resistivity Tomography (ERT) geophysical surveys, which reveal shallow hydrological pathways (1–5 m below the surface) in the glacial foreland (surveyed 400 m from the glacier terminus). Here, meltwater is transported through a saturated sediment zone feeding proglacial upwellings. Our results inform the first conceptual models of summer vs. wintertime subglacial water routing and naled formation in the proglacial zone of the Greenland Ice Sheet. We show that wintertime naledi form from a combination of top-down (unconfined) and bottom-up (confined) freezing processes which incorporates subglacial discharge, overland flow and precipitation, whereas accreted ice forms from upwellings of high velocity, highly pressurised water which freezes upon release. These seasonal changes drive different geochemical and nutrient outputs, which are critical for evaluating glacier meltwater contributions to proglacial groundwater systems and the impact of glacial discharge on downstream ecosystems.

The authors' abstract, as published at the source. The Cryosphere, 2026 · DOI ↗