Earth Science Research; Vol. 6, No. 1; 2017 ISSN 1927-0542 E-ISSN 1927-0550 Published by Canadian Center of Science and Education 97 Supercooling of Seawater Near the Glacier Front in a Fjord A. V. Marchenko 1 , E. G. Morozov 2 & N. A. Marchenko 1 1 Svalbard University Center, Longyearbyen, Spitsbergen, Norway 2 Shirshov Institute of Oceanology, Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow, Russia Correspondence to: E. G. Morozov, Nakhimovskiy pr. 36, Moscow 117997, Russia. E-mail: egmorozov@mail.ru Received: July 14, 2016 Accepted: August 10, 2016 Online Published: December 27, 2016 doi:10.5539/esr.v6n1p97 URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.5539/esr.v6n1p97 Abstract We analyze seawater temperature and salinity in the immediate vicinity of the Paulbreen front in Spitsbergen. The CTD-measurements were carried out from ice in winter and from a boat in summer. ADCP profiling was performed near the glacier front from the ice in winter. In winter, we found water with lower salinity than the surrounding water in the fjord at a distance of 15 m from the glacier front and recorded a low upward water flux near the glacier. Relatively fresh water was found at a depth of 2-4 m near the glacier front in the place where the sea and glacier bed have local depression up to 17 m. Supercooling of the freshened water reached 0.35°C. We link this phenomenon to a flow of freshwater from under a polythermal glacier. This water becomes overcooled in the seawater with significantly lower temperature and higher salinity. Keywords: supercooling, glacier, CTD, Spitsbergen 1. Introduction In this paper, we analyze the measurements of water properties close to the front of Paulabreen (Paula Glacier) in Spitsbergen and examine the deviation of seawater temperature from its freezing point. Three mechanisms exist that lead to supercooling of water: (1) removal of heat, (2) differences in the diffusion rate between heat and salt, and (3) rapid pressure decrease. The processes that occur in the water near glaciers frequently lead to water supercooling. Some decades ago, the special term "glaciohydraulic supercooling" was introduced (Röthlisberger, 1972). The author reports that glaciohydraulic supercooling is a process that occurs when the pressure melting point of water ascending the adverse slope of a subglacial overdeepening rises faster than the water is heated by viscous dissipation resulting in water remaining liquid below 0°C. In other words, glaciohydraulic supercooling occurs when water rapidly ascends to smaller depths and cools to the temperature needed for freezing. Upwelling and cooling of water with salinity lower than that in the surrounding waters is a particular case of this phenomenon. Transport of water from the region of high pressure to the region of low pressure without equalization of the water’s internal energy can lead to freezing (Creyts and Clarke, 2010). Cook et al. (2006) analyze the processes in the basement of glaciers and state that glaciohydraulic supercooling allows water to remain liquid at temperatures lower than the freezing point. They write: Glaciohydraulic supercooling is a process that allows water at the base of a glacier to remain liquid at a temperature below its freezing point in response to the geometry of water flow and subglacial pressure. Conditions for seawater supercooling arise when water is cooled to the freezing point in situ due to the contact with ice in deep water. If the water then ascends to the depths where the local freezing temperature is higher, the water appears at a temperature below the freezing point (Stevens et al., 2010) because the freezing temperature decreases when pressure decreases. It has been shown that floating glaciers over a shelf can be sources of supercooled water (Debenham, 1965; Jeffries and Weeks, 1992). Such a phenomenon was found in the data from CTD casts (Stevens et al., 2010, Fig. 6) in seawater close to a glacier: the seawater was 0.01°C cooler than its freezing point under the floating ice of a glacier tongue in Antarctica. We think that in this case two mechanisms are responsible: fast cooling and fast upward motion to lower pressure. If there are no nucleation centers, the supercooled water remains liquid and then platelets and frazil ice crystals are formed. Observations of this phenomenon are described in (Dmitrenko et al., 2010; Robinson, 2010). On the basis of laboratory studies, Brewster and Gebhart (1994) report strong supercooling of water with oceanic salinity 35 psu. This water supercooled by as much as 5.0°C before it began to freeze. Moreover, this