Abstract
Glacier algal blooms occupying the melting surface of the Greenland Ice Sheet (GrIS) support diverse microbial communities and amplify ice melt through positive albedo feedback. Knowledge about the distribution and magnitude of these blooms has been limited to isolated field surveys or regional remote sensing and modelling studies to-date. Here, we present Greenland-wide simulations of glacier algal blooms over the past two decades (2000–2022) using a Quasi Monte Carlo (QMC) ensemble approach informed through sensitivity analysis of key model parameters. We show how conditions conducive for glacier algal growth are present around the entirety of the GrIS margins each year of our study regardless of the magnitude and duration of the melt season. Spatiotemporal heterogeneity in accumulated biomass is modelled across the ablation zone, between ice sheet sectors and relative to inter-annual variability in melt. Bloom magnitude maps to the availability of ablation zone area in each year and we identify northern sectors as potential harbingers of expansive blooms that remain to be sampled. A small increasing trend in total bloom extent (3724 km−2 yr−1) between 2000 and 2022 supports the likelihood of future bloom expansion as more of the ice sheet is unlocked by warming.
Similar content being viewed by others
Ablation provides key macronutrients (nitrogen and phosphorous) to glacier ice algae in NW Greenland
Ubiquitous acceleration in Greenland Ice Sheet calving from 1985 to 2022
Spatial and temporal variability of supraglacial algae on an Alpine glacier (Forni Glacier, Italy)
Acknowledgements
We thank Xavier Fettweis for providing the MAR model outputs employed in this study. ArcticDEM was provided by the Polar Geospatial Center (https://www.pgc.umn.edu/data/arcticdem/). The outline of Greenland was provided by Natural Earth (https://www.naturalearthdata.com/).
Funding
CW was supported by The Leverhulme Trust (RPG-2020-199 and RF-2025-532/2) and the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) (NE/Y002636/1). AT was supported by Swiss National Foundation award TMSGI2_218095. DEMs provided by the Polar Geospatial Center under NSF-OPP awards 1043681, 1559691, 1542736, 1810976, and 2129685.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Ethics declarations
Competing interests
The authors declare no competing interests.
Additional information
Publisher’s note Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.
Supplementary information
Transparent Peer Review file (download PDF )
Supplementary Material (download PDF )
Rights and permissions
Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
Reprints and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Williamson, C.J., Tedstone, A.J. Ubiquitous and expanding glacier algal blooms modelled around the Greenland Ice Sheet.
Commun Earth Environ (2026). https://doi.org/10.1038/s43247-026-03758-8
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s43247-026-03758-8
Source: Ecology - nature.com
