Altimetry-based ice-marginal lake water level changes in Greenland

Abstract

Greenland holds over 3300 ice-marginal lakes, serving as natural reservoirs for outflow of meltwater to the ocean. A sudden release of water can largely influence ecosystems, landscape morphology, ice dynamics and cause flood hazards. While large-scale studies of glacial lake outburst floods (GLOFs) have been conducted in many glaciated regions, Greenland remains understudied. Here we use altimetry data to provide the first Greenland-wide inventory of ice-marginal lake water level changes, studying over 1100 lakes from 2003–2023, revealing a diverse range of lake behaviors. Around 60% of the lakes exhibit minimal fluctuations, while 326 lakes have drained, collectively contributing to 541 observed GLOFs from 2008–2022. These GLOFs vary substantially in magnitude and frequency, with the highest concentration observed in the North and Northeast regions. Our results show substantial annual differences in the number of GLOFs with a notable peak in 2019, coinciding with a year marked by extreme runoff. Our method detected a 1200% increase in the number of draining lakes compared to existing historical databases. This highlights a large underreporting of GLOF events and emphasizes the pressing need for a deeper understanding of the mechanisms behind and the consequences of these dramatic events.

The sudden drainage of ice-marginal lakes in Greenland impacts glacier dynamics, ecosystems, and flood hazards, and is more common than previously estimated, according to an extensive remote-sensing inventory of lake level variations since 2003.