Department Lecture Series (DLS) – Fiamma Straneo (UC San Diego)

“Glaciers, icebergs and muddy plumes: A tale of collaborative climate research in a Greenland glacial fjord”

The Greenland Ice Sheet lost over 5 trillion tons of ice over the last three decades and the ice loss is projected to continue. This loss is driving global sea level rise and inducing a freshening of the North Atlantic with potential consequences for the global ocean circulation. Key to understanding the drivers and impacts of this loss are processes that regulate the exchange of heat and mass between the ice and the ocean within Greenland’s glacial fjords. The complexity of processes and scales involved, the intrinsic lack of data from these challenging environments, and the relatively new area of research, means that even a basic understanding of the leading dynamics is missing. Progress thus requires a multi-faceted effort that builds on observations of the ocean, the ice and the atmosphere and is complemented by theory and models. In this talk, I summarize results from the Saqqarleq Project which focused on describing the exchanges between a mid-sized glacier in West Greenland and the Saqqarleq Fjord it discharges into. This is a story of muddy plumes, jets, a glacier and icebergs that involved engineers, oceanographers, glaciologists and local fishermen. Cumulatively, the body of work that emerged from this project exemplifies how addressing complex climate questions requires a concerted, interdisciplinary, collaborative, and persistent approach.

About this Series: The Department Lecture Series at EAPS at MIT is a series of weekly talks given by leading thinkers in the areas of geology, geophysics, geobiology, geochemistry, atmospheric science, oceanography, climatology, and planetary science. For more information please contact Madelyn Musick: mmusick@mit.edu