The Science Beneath Your Expedition Ship: Why Scientists Are Racing To Understand Greenland's Glaciers

Few places leave a stronger impression than Greenland. You just need to read our recent expedition log by Erika Commisso to see that. 

This is not romanticising; it is the reality of the place. Towering glaciers spill into deep fjords, vast icebergs drift silently past expedition ships, and the scale of the landscape often feels beyond comparison. Whether exploring Scoresby Sund in East Greenland, Disko Bay on the west coast or the remote fjords of the northeast, guests quickly realise they are travelling through one of the planet's last great wildernesses.

Yet beneath the surface of these seemingly timeless landscapes, an enormous scientific effort is underway.

Every glacier front, every iceberg and every plume of icy water entering the sea contains information that scientists are desperately trying to understand.

This summer, that effort is being led by one of the world's most advanced research vessels.

The British research ship RRS Sir David Attenborough has departed for Greenland, carrying an international team of around 80 scientists, engineers and crew as part of the GIANT project, Greenland Ice Sheet to Atlantic Tipping points. The £20 million programme aims to improve our understanding of how Greenland's glaciers interact with the surrounding ocean and how those changes could influence climate systems across the North Atlantic.

The expedition will spend between five and six weeks operating in Greenland's fjords, collecting measurements from places that have rarely, if ever, been studied in such detail.

For expedition travellers, many of these locations are familiar names. For scientists, they remain some of the least understood environments on Earth.

Most visitors understandably focus on what they can see above the water.

The towering ice cliffs. The thunder of a glacier calving. The countless shades of blue trapped within ancient ice.

The real mystery, however, lies below the surface.

Scientists know that warmer Atlantic water is reaching many of Greenland's fjords, but understanding exactly how that water melts glaciers from below has remained one of climate science's greatest challenges. Traditional computer models cannot fully recreate these complex interactions because so few direct measurements have ever been taken beneath glacier fronts.

That is exactly what this expedition hopes to change.

Among the technology aboard the Sir David Attenborough is perhaps Britain's most famous underwater vehicle.

Boaty McBoatface, the autonomous submarine whose name became an internet sensation in 2016, will finally undertake one of its most ambitious scientific missions yet.

Rather than exploring open water, Boaty will travel beneath the chaotic mix of floating icebergs and sea ice known as the ice mélange that forms in front of Greenland's glaciers. These are dangerous places that are virtually inaccessible to researchers using conventional methods.

Alongside Boaty, scientists will deploy underwater sensors, autonomous surface vehicles, drones and sophisticated monitoring equipment to map glacier faces, measure ocean temperatures and understand how glaciers are melting beneath the waterline. Much of this technology has never before been used together in such challenging conditions.

It is easy to think of this purely as climate science. 

In reality, it is also about understanding the landscapes that expedition travellers come to experience.

Every Zodiac cruise beneath a glacier, every iceberg photographed from the deck, and every fjord explored by an expedition ship form part of a natural system that scientists are only beginning to understand fully.

The better researchers can model these glaciers, the better they can understand how Greenland's ice sheet is responding to a warming ocean and improve forecasts of future change. Those improvements are expected to feed into climate models and provide earlier warning of significant shifts in North Atlantic circulation.

Long before expedition cruising became popular, Greenland attracted explorers, surveyors and scientists.

Today's expedition ships continue that tradition.

Many voyages already host marine biologists, glaciologists, ornithologists and historians who help guests understand the environments they are visiting. Citizen science programmes allow passengers to contribute wildlife sightings, whale observations and seabird records, while some operators also assist with oceanographic and environmental monitoring.

The Sir David Attenborough expedition represents science operating on a different scale, but the principle remains the same: exploration is about discovery as much as it is about destination.

The next time you stand quietly on the deck of an expedition ship watching a glacier calve into a Greenland fjord, remember that there is another story unfolding beneath the surface.

Hundreds of metres below the waterline, ocean currents interact with ice accumulated over thousands of years. Autonomous submarines are venturing into places humans cannot safely reach, collecting data that could transform our understanding of one of Earth's most important ice sheets.

For travellers, Greenland remains one of the most extraordinary places on the planet to visit. For scientists, it may also hold some of the most important answers about our changing world.

The GIANT project brings together researchers from multiple UK universities and research institutions and is led by the British Antarctic Survey. Over the coming weeks, the team will investigate how Greenland's fjord glaciers interact with the ocean using autonomous underwater vehicles, drones and advanced ocean sensors. Their findings will improve climate models and help scientists better understand one of the least studied parts of the Greenland Ice Sheet.