The stability of the Greenland Ice Sheet (GrIS) is a threat to coastal communities worldwide. We have changed our understanding of why it darkens during the melt season, becoming increasingly deep purple due to pigmented ice algal blooms in the ice surface, producing more melt and accelerating the GrIS towards its tipping point, and accelerating sea level rise.
The next step jump in our understanding of biological darkening will be provided by DEEP PURPLE, which will establish the factors that control ice algal blooms. These factors are essential for the modelling of future melting, which require a process-based understanding of blooming. DEEP PURPLE will quantify the synergies between the biology, chemistry and physics of ice algae micro-niches in rotting, melting ice, and examine the combination of factors which stabilise them.
State-of-the-science analytical and observational methods will be employed to characterise the complex mosaic of wet ice habitats, dependent on factors such as the hydrology, nutrient status, particulate content and light fields within these continually evolving ice-water-particulate-microbe systems. We will quantitatively assess why and how the fine light mineral dust particulates contained within the melting ice amplify the growth of ice algae.
The particulate content and composition of different layers in the GrIS is dependent on age, and so the algae that the melting ice can support may fundamentally change over time. We look back to understand if the ice biome has changed through the Anthropocene via analyse of fjord sediments. The first draft genome of ice algae will show their key adaptations to glacier surface habitats. DEEP PURPLE looks forward by providing the critical field data sets and conceptual models of ice algal growth that will facilitate the next generation of predictive models of sea level rise due to biologically enhanced melting of the GrIS.
DEEP PURPLE aims to investigate the physical and microbial processes that darken the Greenland Ice Sheet (GrIS) and accelerate sea level rise, with the following principal objectives:
1. To make contemporaneous measurements of the biological, geochemical and physical factors effecting surface darkening at sites across the GrIS, including the relatively frigid north of the Dark Zone, towards the interior of the ice sheet and at sites in the relatively mild south.
2. To gain process information on the limits and stimulation of darkening from a southern site, and the potential for further darkening from the northern and the interior areas of the GrIS.
3. To examine interactions between ice algae, mineral dust (including black carbon) concentrations, and test their relative importance and synergies in surface darkening.
