Insights into the complex system of atmosphere, land, ice and ocean in Northeast Greenland: Synthesis and key results of the GROCE project published

The Chair of Geodetic Earth System Research actively participated in the joint project Greenland Ice Sheet - Ocean Interaction (GROCE), which was funded by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) for a period of 6 years (2017 to 2023). In subproject 6, led by Mirko Scheinert and Martin Horwath, our research focussed on the deformation of the Earth's crust, the ice mass balance and the evolution of the frontal positions of the large outlet glaciers Nioghalvfjerdsbræ and Zachariae Isstrøm. 

© Kanzow et al. (2025)

© Mirko Scheinert

The article, now published in the journal The Cryosphere, presents and discusses the main results of the successful multidisciplinary cooperation between working groups from the Helmholtz Centres AWI (Bremerhaven) and GEOMAR (Kiel), the universities in Dresden, Bremen, Bonn and Erlangen-Nuremberg and the Leibniz Institute for Baltic Sea Research Warnemünde. It was shown that the system between atmosphere, ice sheet, solid earth and ocean is subject to complex interactions, which react extremely sensitively to climate changes. In particular, the interplay between large- and small-scale ocean currents with the Nioghalvfjerdsbræ, which forms a floating ice tongue about 20 kilometres wide and 70 kilometres long, may lead to an increased or even short-term ice retreat in the future.

© Kanzow et al. (2025)

Kanzow, T., Humbert, A., Mölg, T., Scheinert, M., Braun, M., Burchard, H., Doglioni, F., Hochreuther, P., Horwath, M., Huhn, O., Kappelsberger, M., Kusche, J., Loebel, E., Lutz, K., Marzeion, B., McPherson, R., Mohammadi-Aragh, M., Möller, M., Pickler, C., Reinert, M., Rhein, M., Rückamp, M., Schaffer, J., Shafeeque, M., Stolzenberger, S., Timmermann, R., Turton, J., Wekerle, C., and Zeising, O.:
The system of atmosphere, land, ice and ocean in the region near the 79N Glacier in northeast Greenland: synthesis and key findings from the Greenland Ice Sheet–Ocean Interaction (GROCE) experiment.
The Cryosphere, 19, 1789–1824, https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-19-1789-2025, 2025.

© (c) Mirko Scheinert

© Sven Ellger

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