This glacier loses 300,000 gallons per second, and NASA just revealed its value

Jakobshavn Glacier — also known as Sermeq Kujalleq — is the most active glacier on Greenland’s ice sheet. Located on the island’s west coast, this glacier contributes a tremendous amount of freshwater to the sea in summer. The meltwater, being more buoyant than saltwater, rises, possibly pulling up nutrients like iron and nitrate with it to support the growth of phytoplankton. Phytoplankton, being the base of the marine food web, serve as food for krill and other grazers, who, in turn, support larger marine animals, including fish and whales.

Nutrients in surface water usually decline in summer, as most of them are consumed by the spring phytoplankton bloom. Hence, the upwelling from glacial runoff would be important in supporting Greenland’s phytoplankton in the summer. But confirming this process near Greenland’s mile-thick ice sheet proved nearly impossible, as the coastal waters are choked with icebergs the size of city blocks.

To overcome this challenge, NASA turned to advanced computer models to simulate the Jakobshavn Glacier’s fjord. NASA harnessed the Estimating the Circulation and Climate of the Ocean-Darwin (ECCO-Darwin) model — a model that utilizes decades-worth of data. Running this model on NASA’s supercomputers revealed that glacial runoff could increase summer phytoplankton growth by 15-40%.

More work is yet to be done, however, as confirmed by Dustin Carroll, an oceanographer affiliated with NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California. “We reconstructed what’s happening in one key system, but there’s more than 250 such glaciers around Greenland,” Carroll said.