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This gridded hydrographic data set for Sermilik Fjord was created by objectively mapping (optimally interpolating) discrete hydrographic profile datasets from shipboard Conductivity Temperature Depth (CTD) and helicopter-deployed eXpendable CTDs (XCTDs). These data are all from the summer season (July - September) and cover the years 2009 - 2023 (excluding 2014 and 2020). Grids are standardized to 2 kilometer (km) (horizontal) x 5 meter (m) (depth) resolution grid stretching from 0 km (at Helheim Glacier terminus in 2019) to 106 km away from the terminus following the deepest pathway of bathymetry from the glacier to the shelf (thalweg section). CTD and XCTD profiles were combined to increase along-fjord coverage of the gridded fields. Appropriate gridding parameters and the a priori error were found through a series of manual tests to find a balance between smoothness and hydrographic feature representation (more information in Roth et al. (2025)). The same parameters were used for gridding all variables. Currently the conservative temperature (°C, celsius) and absolute salinity (g kg^-1 (gram per kilogram)) fields, along with their associated mapping relative error, are provided. Other hydrographic variables (eg. dissolved oxygen, nitrate) can be added in the future following the method in Roth et al. (2025) and future surveys of Sermilik Fjord can also be added to increase the time coverage. 

Abstract. As global atmosphere and ocean temperatures rise and the Greenland Ice Sheet loses mass, the glacial fjords of Kalaallit Nunaat/Greenland play an increasingly critical role in our climate system. Fjords are pathways for freshwater from ice melt to reach the ocean and for deep, warm, nutrient-rich ocean waters to reach marine–terminating glaciers, supporting abundant local ecosystems that Greenlanders rely upon. Research in Greenland fjords has become more interdisciplinary and more observations are being collected in fjords than in previous decades. However, there are few long-term (> 10 years) datasets available for single fjords. Additionally, observations in fjords are often spatially and temporally disjointed, utilize multiple observing tools, and datasets are rarely provided in formats that are easily used across disciplines or audiences. We address this issue by providing standardized, gridded summer season hydrographic sections for Sermilik Fjord in Southeast Greenland, from 2009–2023. Gridded data facilitate the analysis of coherent spatial patterns across the fjord domain, and are a more accessible and intuitive data product compared to discrete profiles. We combined ship-based conductivity, temperature, and depth (CTD) profiles with helicopter-deployed eXpendable CTD (XCTD) profiles from the ice mélange region to create objectively mapped (or optimally interpolated) along-fjord sections of conservative temperature and absolute salinity. From the gridded data, we derived a summer season climatological mean and root mean square deviation, summarizing typical fjord conditions and highlighting regions of variability. This information can be used by model and laboratory studies, biological and ecosystem studies in the fjord, and provides context for interpreting previous work. Additionally, this method can be applied to datasets from other fjords helping to facilitate fjord intercomparison studies. The gridded data and climatological products are available in netCDF format at https://doi.org/10.18739/A28G8FK6D (Roth et al., 2025a). All original profile observations, with unique DOIs for each field campaign, are available through the Sermilik Fjord Hydrography Data Portal (https://arcticdata.io/catalog/portals/sermilik, last access: 7 November 2025) hosted by the Arctic Data Center (Straneo et al., 2025). The code used has also been made available to facilitate continued updates to the Sermilik Fjord gridded section dataset and applications to other fjord systems.