A British-led expedition to a remote fjord in east Greenland peers 10,000 years into glacier history to assess a current system's instability and its impact on marine ecosystems.

20 October 2026

The project, KANG-GLAC, is one of the first to map key areas of the Greenland coastline and to study its glaciers in depth. Using a multitude of scientific disciplines, the project’s aim is to increase understanding of a complex area in east Greenland, and the impact a rapidly melting Arctic could have through changes to the oceans, as sea level rises and ice cap melt waters enter the ocean.

The main data collection took place in July and August 2024 as part of the RRS Sir David Attenborough’s cruise SD041 focused on the area around Kangerlussuaq Gletsjer, a contributing glacier to the Nioghalvfjerdsfjord Glacier. This glacier is one of the largest areas of floating ice in the Arctic to have shown significant signs of instability.

What the Expedition set Out to Do

The KANG-GLAC project led outtings set a number of ambitious aims, which the Department for Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy-funded team began investigating this summer. These included:

• Accurately mapping the coastline and seafloors of previously unmapped areas in east Greenland

• Installing specific measurements to assist in ongoing monitoring of the glaciers

• Taking sediment cores to chart glacier retreats and changes in marine conditions since the end of the last ice age

• Deploying different scientific tools to study what impact the melting of such a glacier could have on the marine ecosystems in the area.

The project’s ultimate goal is to parameterise numerical models of the Holocene Ice Shelf, a time between 9,000–5,000 years ago, when scientists believe the glaciers melted significantly. This was a time when temperatures in Greenland were at least 2°C warmer than recent decades.

In 2024, SD041 formed the second part of that mission. The first took place in 2021 and involved measuring and mapping the key geographical areas like Nioghalvfjerdsfjord, Midgardgletsjer, and areas around different fjords in east Greenland.

This year’s mission comes at a critical point. Multiple expeditions to east Greenland have documented how glaciers like Kangerlussuaq Gletsjer have rapidly retreated, shown signs of instability, and pose an increased threat as the Arctic warms.

Why this fjord system matters

Historically, the Nioghalvfjerds Fjord system had been relatively stable. It had been seen as having a stable ice front between 1912 and 1968, when most other Greenlandic glaciers were retreating. This made Nioghalvfjerds Fjord a unique system, and one many expedition reports flagged up as significant.

However, that changed in the early 2000s when monitoring started being conducted by satellite, documenting how the ice front of the Nioghalvfjerds Fjord had begun to retreat. Since then the front has retreated 40-50 km along land-terminating sections, and increased calving at marine sections.

Such rapid retreat has helped make the Nioghalvfjerds Fjord system a critical area for study and one ripe for more data. As summer 2024 tours document, the expedition has focused fieldwork on two sites. The first is the area in front of Nioghalvfjerdfjords Glacier. Unless the recent atmospheric circulation pattern changes significantly, the current area between the glacier and 80.3N Greenland coast is predicted to collapse into the next warm season. The collapse and the subsequent calving events will likely play a critical role in Nioghalvfjerds glacial retreat and future growth of Nioghalvfjerds Glacier.

Secondly, the mission focuses on the Midgardgletsjer Glacier which acts as the drain on Kangerlussuaq Gletsjer and was the location of summer basecamps by expedition teams studying East Greenland.

Matching up all these data inputs from residents of Scoresby Sund, historic records, and the evidence of historical retreat to known climate change impacts allows KANG-GLAC to start mapping out just how the climate in the area has changed over the past 10,000 years.

What the Team Found in the Historical Record

To understand the present and future retreat of Nioghalvfjerdfjord Glacier, it is worth looking into its instability in the past. The KANG-GLAC project incorporated analysis of terrestrial stratigraphy, core logs, and other evidence to follow the glacier’s smallest movements.

A 9 km ice tongue broke away from Kangerdlugssuaq glacier sometime between the summers of 1932 and 1933. Earlier in 1919, a large ice tongue in Wervedal Sogn broke away from the Bremer Glacier. Also, historical studies mapped how the glacier had retreated, and how certain areas and individual tidewater glaciers were very sensitive to even slight increases in temperatures.

Midgardgletsjer had advanced onto Greenland Inland Ice in 1985 before grounding on the shoal Haugrock and only retreating 100-150 meters northwest along the shoal by 2003.

These changes happened in the context of a warming Arctic and fits with many other monitored retreats in the big east Greenland glaciers.

In accommodating these changes, the KANG-GLAC expedition aims to help predict where and how glaciers will move in the future.

How the research was done

The KANG-GLAC’s cruise in 2024 spent a total of 772 hours carrying out a range of activities. They included:

- Bathymetry mapping

- Sediment coring

- Iceberg deployments, and

- Low frequency seismic observations

This allowed the collection of sediment cores across areas of fjord like Kangerlussuaq Gletsjer. In the records, scientists have found evidence of High Arctic conditions on the east Greenland shelf around 10.5-10.0 thousand years ago, concurrent with ice sheet and fjord glaciers still present on the shelf.

To augment these structured approaches, the scientists worked with Ameralik Fjord residents to develop 'spot observations'. That means records experts were able to work together to maximize data collection.

Some examples of this include:

- Reports from the chief of the Nioghalvfjerds noted an early retreat in Scoresby-Sund that lasted for over a century.

- Expedition members recorded ongoing visible changes to the Midgardgletsjer Glacier using collaborating information from residents.

- The expedition included Greenlandic data collectors who worked with Inuit experts in the area.

That data has allowed the expedition to find a wealth of information. They include evidence of glacier retreat during the Holocene Thermal Maximum (9–5 thousand years ago) and the documented retreat of Kangerlussuaq Gletsjer from historical records, core logs, and other primary sources.

Broader climate significance

The potential for Kangerlussuaq Gletsjer, and the larger Nioghalvferd Fjord system to collapse shows the fragility of this area.

The sediment coring program showed how swiftly glaciers retreat after a period of sea ice disappearance. Similarly, historical records show how rapidly and how completely glaciers like Midgardgletsjer can retreat, making it critical that researchers rapidly build knowledge of similar glaciers.

The Kangerlussuaq Gletsjer is a critical outlet glacier in East Greenland, with an extensive confluence system of glaciers that drain into the large fjords. Because of the size of the glaciers and the rapidly rising air and marine temperatures in the area, climate scientists are urgently trying to build a better picture of past retreats to predict its future.

One of the methods used is the study of similar events in our past. During the warmest Arctic temperatures in the past 10,000 years, geological evidence shows a period of warming to pre-Little Ice Age levels with relatively modest 1.89°C warming, attributing most of the warming to AMOC reorganization.

These subtle changes did not mean huge freeze and melt cycles so much as numerous smaller changes that were hard to track.

The key issue with the glaciers in the area is that the glaciers have remained in place while the temperature has risen. As the ground, air and ocean temperature has risen, the glaciers' frozen connections to bedrock begin to weaken, while warmer air melts them from above. That means the likelihood of an ice shelf collapse rises.

Even seasoned scientists are seeing changes that are beyond what they anticipated and this team acknowledges the potential of these findings, but say they need significantly more research to truly understand what is happening.