Meltwater runoff from the Greenland Ice Sheet (GrIS) is a major and increasing contributor to rising sea levels. It also impacts ice flow by controlling how easily the ice slides, and once it enters the ocean can affect ocean currents and marine ecosystems.
The research project ‘Greenland Runoff Monitoring from Passive Seismology’ (GRuMPS) is led by Professor Stephen Livingstone from the School of Geography and Planning.
Professor Livingstone’s multi-national team will deploy a network of passive seismic instruments to measure runoff by ‘listening’ to vibrations created by flowing water. These sensors will be lower cost and less prone to damage than conventional monitoring systems, enabling a shift from current sparse measurements to systematic, continuous and near-real time monitoring of meltwater runoff from major glacier outlets.
The GRuMPS project is part of a £81m funding package from the Advanced Research and Invention Agency (ARIA) entitled Forecasting Tipping Points, which aims to enhance our climate change response by developing an early warning system for tipping points.
A climate tipping point is a threshold beyond which certain ecosystems or planetary processes begin to shift from one stable state to another, triggering dramatic and often self-reinforcing changes in the climate system. Examples of this might include meltwater runoff affecting the Atlantic Ocean’s main ocean current system, which could in turn substantially cool Northern Europe.
Professor Stephen Livingstone said: “We are delighted to have been awarded this funding and can’t wait to get the project started. Our observations will provide critical inputs for climate, ice sheet and ocean models used to simulate climate tipping points.”