Hidden Earth 2025

Scientific Investigations in Greenland’s Caves: Unlocking High Arctic Climate Histories

30 minute Lecture|Gina Moseley

Abstract

Greenland’s High Arctic caves represent a unique and largely untapped archive of past environmental change. Since 2015, the Greenland Caves Project has carried out multidisciplinary scientific investigations across several limestone cave systems between 80 to 82 °N in North Greenland, including sites in Kronprins Christian Land and Wulff Land.

These caves host rare but exceptionally well-preserved flowstones that formed during past warm periods when the regional climate was wetter and the ground was warm enough that it did not contain permafrost, thereby allowing water to percolate through the ground and into the caves.
Through a combination of U-Pb dating, stable isotope geochemistry (δ¹⁸O, δ¹³C), trace element analysis, and petrography, The Greenland Caves Project has reconstructed aspects of Greenland’s paleohydrology, permafrost dynamics, and atmospheric circulation during the Miocene, between 15 to 5 million years ago.

The cave records complement and extend marine and ice-core data, offering an independent terrestrial perspective on high-latitude climate variability. Ongoing work is focused on refining chronologies, improving paleoclimate proxies in Arctic cave settings, and integrating these records into broader paleoclimate frameworks. These findings highlight the scientific importance of Greenland’s caves as high-latitude climate archives and underscore their sensitivity to past and future environmental change.