Around the Greenlandic coastline, plumes associated with glaciers are a significant source of lithogenic material to the ocean. With increasing annual fluxes of runoff and calved ice, it is unclear how freshening of the shelf will affect primary production in the future ocean. Here we combine historical records of water column nutrient (nitrate, phosphate and silicate) concentrations, modelled freshwater discharge, and satellite derived estimates of chlorophyll a to assess the influence of runoff on marine biogeochemistry. Over 28,000 discrete nutrient concentrations are available since 1920 for the Greenlandic shelf region and clearly show evidence of a modest silicate source (+20.9 µmol L^-1 freshwater) and a small phosphate sink (-0.04 µmol L^-1) associated with freshening. Satellite derived chlorophyll trends derived from MODIS since 2003 suggest no clear chlorophyll-runoff relationship on a pan Greenland shelf scale through summer, but considering the contrasting oceanographic dynamics of the east/west coastlines this is perhaps not surprising. However, a clear relationship was found between runoff and chlorophyll downstream of the largest glacier outflows up to 50 km from the coastline. Further analysis suggests that an increasing trend of chlorophyll with runoff is related to the entrainment of nutrients within upwelling plumes indicating that productivity in the Disko Bay region, home to Greenland’s largest commercial fisheries, may increase in coming decades.