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Evidence for subsea permafrost in subarctic Canada linked to submarine groundwater discharge

Nature Geoscience (2024)Cite this article

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Abstract

The distribution and state of subsea permafrost is largely unknown. Present maps, which rely heavily on model results, suggest that subsea permafrost is confined to the Beaufort, Siberian and Laptev seas. Here we show that discontinuous subsea permafrost exists along the Labrador coast (56 °N) under the influence of the Labrador Coastal Current. High-resolution bathymetric data reveal the presence of subsea thermokarst environments on the coastal seabed of Nain, Nunatsiavut, where an ice-rich sediment sample was recovered in July 2022 at a water depth of 27 m. Porewater analysis indicates that ground ice can persist in the sediments due to freshened submarine groundwater seepage that freezes at higher temperatures (0 °C) than seawater (−1.8 °C). The formation and preservation of subsea permafrost landforms is due to cold waters of the Labrador Coastal Current entering the coastal areas and remaining less than 0 °C for most of the year. Therefore, evidence of subsea permafrost landforms in coastal Labrador and the distribution of cold bottom water in the Northern Hemisphere suggests that subsea permafrost is likely to be preserved elsewhere in subarctic regions, especially where freshened submarine groundwater seepage elevates the freezing temperature. This highlights the potential underestimation of subsea permafrost in the world’s coastal oceans.

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Fig. 1: Subsea thermokarst landforms discovered in coastal Labrador.
Fig. 2: Subbottom stratigraphy of Webb’s Bay.
Fig. 3: Submarine groundwater discharge on the seafloor of Webb’s Bay.
Fig. 4: Cryostructures of a frozen sediment sample collected in core 60 collected over the thermokarst area.
Fig. 5: Temperature transects in Webb’s Bay.
Fig. 6: Climatological annual mean bottom water temperature in the northern hemisphere based on GLORYS12 data.

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Data availability

All data are available from the Geological Survey of Canada Expedition Database and by contacting Natural Resources Canada (https://ed.marine-geo.canada.ca/cruises_e.php) under cruise 2021LudyPudluk, 2021Nuliajuk, 2022William-Kennedy and 2023002. The multi-beam bathymetry, the chloride content of porewater, the Ra isotopes of bottom waters and the CTD profiles from 2022, are available as source data with this manuscript. Bottom temperature maps (Fig. 6) were derived using EU Copernicus Marine Service Information (https://doi.org/10.48670/moi-00021). Source data are provided with this paper.

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Acknowledgements

This project was funded by the Marine Geoscience for Marine Spatial Planning of the Geological Survey of Canada (Natural Resources Canada), and the Natural Science and Engineering Research Council of Canada Ship-time allocation grant. We thank Kirk Regular and Adam Templeton for surveys on the RV Ludy-Pudluk (partly funded by a Canada Research Chair in Ocean Mapping at the Marine Institute of Memorial University) and RV Nuliajuk as well as all the scientific participants of the 2022 and 2023 RV William-Kennedy cruises. Work on the RV William-Kennedy was supported in part by the Churchill Marine Observatory, a Canada Foundation for Innovation grant led by the University of Manitoba in collaboration with other partners, including the Arctic Research Foundation. We also acknowledge the Nunatsiavut Government, the Nunatsiavut Research Centre and the Labrador Inuit of Nain for their guidance on research conducted on traditional Inuit lands. This work was completed with Nunatsiavut government Research Advisory Committee approval nos 18034796 and 11666556.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Geological Survey of Canada (Atlantic), Natural Resources Canada, Bedford Institute of Oceanography, Dartmouth, Nova Scotia, Canada

    Alexandre Normandeau, Jordan B. R. Eamer, Jennifer L. Eamer & Geneviève Philibert

  2. Northern Environmental Geoscience Laboratory, Department of Geography and Planning, Queen’s University, Kingston, Ontario, Canada

    Robert G. Way

  3. Department of Oceanography, Dalhousie University, Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada

    Emma J. Harrison, Christopher K. Algar & Haley D. Geizer

  4. Northwest Atlantic Fisheries Centre, Fisheries and Oceans Canada, St. John’s, Newfoundland and Labrador, Canada

    Frédéric Cyr

  5. Department of Earth Sciences, University of New Brunswick, Fredericton, New Brunswick, Canada

    Jennifer L. Eamer, Nicolas Van Nieuwenhove & Audrey Limoges

  6. Department of Ocean and Earth Sciences, Old Dominion University, Norfolk, VA, USA

    Jessica Haddock & Joseph Tamborski

  7. Department of Civil and Resource Engineering and Centre for Water Resources Studies, Dalhousie University, Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada

    Barret L. Kurylyk

  8. Lands and Natural Resources, Nunatsiavut Government, Nain, Newfoundland and Labrador, Canada

    Liz Pijogge & Michelle Saunders

  9. Fisheries and Marine Institute, Memorial University of Newfoundland, St. John’s, Newfoundland and Labrador, Canada

    Katleen Robert

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Contributions

A.N., A.L. and K.R. secured funding for the different cruises. A.N. and K.R. designed the 2021 mapping cruise. A.N., J.B.R.E. and A.L. designed the sampling cruises. A.N., A.L. and M.S. managed the research programme. A.N., J.B.R.E., R.G.W., E.J.H., F.C., J.L.E., H.D.G., N.V.N., J.H., L.P., G.P., J.T., A.L., C.K.A., B.L.K., M.S. and H.D.G. collected, processed and/or analysed the data. All authors contributed to the writing and review of the manuscript.

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Correspondence to Alexandre Normandeau.

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Nature Geoscience thanks Pier Overduin and the other, anonymous, reviewer(s) for their contribution to the peer review of this work. Primary Handling Editor: Tom Richardson, in collaboration with the Nature Geoscience team.

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Supplementary information

Supplementary Information

Supplementary Sections 1 and 2.

Supplementary Data 1

Radium data.

Source data

Source Data Fig. 1

Multi-beam data of Webb’s Bay.

Source Data Fig. 3

Porewater data.

Source Data Fig. 5

CTD data presented in the paper. Zip files include cnv files (July 2022) and xlsx files (September 2022).

Source Data Fig. 2

Subbottom profiles shown in Fig. 2, in JP2000 format.

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Normandeau, A., Eamer, J.B.R., Way, R.G. et al. Evidence for subsea permafrost in subarctic Canada linked to submarine groundwater discharge. Nat. Geosci. (2024). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41561-024-01497-z

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