ClimaTea Lecture with Rebecca Jackson (WHOI)

This week Rebecca Jackson from the MIT/WHOI joint program will be talking to us about "Ocean-glacier interactions in Greenland: fjord dynamics and heat transport." Rebecca says the following about the talk: Glacial fjords link glaciers of the Greenland Ice Sheet to the North Atlantic, and they are the gateways for importing oceanic heat to melt ice and for exporting meltwater into the ocean. Submarine melting in fjords has been implicated as a potential driver of recent glacier acceleration; however, there are no direct measurements of this melting, and little is known about the fjord processes that modulate melt rates and export meltwater. Here, we explore the drivers of fjord circulation and heat transport in Sermilik Fjord, near the terminus of Helheim Glacier. We investigate the competing roles of buoyancy forcing from glacial meltwater and remote forcing from the shelf ocean. Building on estuarine studies of salt fluxes, we assess the fluxes of heat and salt through the fjord and develop a new framework for inferring submarine melt rates from glacial fjord budgets.

Please see the two readings attached for background.