Simulating \u201cbiology, chemistry, and physics coming together\u201d in even one pocket along Greenland\u2019s 27,000 miles (43,000 kilometers) of coastline is a massive math problem, noted lead author Michael Wood, a computational oceanographer at San Jos\u00e9 State University. To break it down, he said the team built a \u201cmodel within a model within a model\u201d to zoom in on the details of the fjord at the foot of the glacier.<\/p>\n
Using supercomputers at NASA\u2019s Ames Research Center in Silicon Valley, they calculated that deepwater nutrients buoyed upward by glacial runoff would be sufficient to boost summertime phytoplankton growth by 15 to 40% in the study area.<\/p>\n
More Changes in Store<\/p>\n
Could increased phytoplankton be a boon for Greenland\u2019s marine animals and fisheries? Carroll said that untangling impacts to the ecosystem will take time. Melt on the Greenland ice sheet is projected to accelerate in coming decades, affecting everything from sea level and land vegetation to the saltiness of coastal waters.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe reconstructed what\u2019s happening in one key system, but there\u2019s more than 250 such glaciers around Greenland,\u201d Carroll said. He noted that the team plans to extend their simulations to the whole Greenland coast and beyond.<\/p>\n
Some changes appear to be impacting the carbon cycle both positively and negatively: The team calculated how runoff from the glacier alters the temperature and chemistry of seawater in the fjord, making it less able to dissolve carbon dioxide. That loss is canceled out, however, by the bigger blooms of phytoplankton taking up more carbon dioxide from the air as they photosynthesize.<\/p>\n
Wood added: \u201cWe didn\u2019t build these tools for one specific application. Our approach is applicable to any region, from the Texas Gulf to Alaska. Like a Swiss Army knife, we can apply it to lots of different scenarios.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Simulating \u201cbiology, chemistry, and physics coming together\u201d in even one pocket along Greenland\u2019s 27,000 miles (43,000 kilometers) of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":63438,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[46],"tags":[191,74],"class_list":{"0":"post-63437","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-computing","8":"tag-computing","9":"tag-technology"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63437","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=63437"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63437\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/63438"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=63437"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=63437"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=63437"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}