heatandice.whoi.eduHeat and Ice | in a Greenland Fjord

wordmark-oneline About WHOI WHOI Research Instruments Data Model & Codes Publications Gallery Select Page Icebergs and fjords Icebergs form when the face of a marine terminating glacier calves sending huge chunks of ice into the sea. Icebergs flux freshwater from ice sheets to the sea, they track and influence ocean circulation in the fjords, and sometimes they destroy instruments along the way. photo credits: M. Andres At the head of Sermilik Fjord in southeastern Greenland is Helheim Glacier , a prolific iceberg producer. Helheim’s icebergs are advected through the fjord to the East Greenland shelf. Some of Helheim’s icebergs have deep-reaching keels… …and those keels can wreak havoc. This subsurface float—pushed below its pressure rating by a passing iceberg with a particularly deep-reaching keel—imploded. With funding from the National Science Foundation (PLR-1332911) and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, we have been working on ways to study the fjord environment with instruments that can be deployed on the seafloor, safely out of reach of the iceberg keels. Read more about our project below… How we measure Our team has been using p ressure-sensor equipped i nverted e cho s ounders (PIESs) to study the heat content and iceberg dynamics in Sermilik Fjord. photo credit: N. Beaird What we measure Each PIES measures time series of round-trip acoustic travel time, bottom pressure and bottom temperature at high sampling rate and for a long duration. photo credit: M. Andres What we learn An algorithm automatically detects icebergs in a PIES’s travel time record. From this we deduce iceberg speed and estimates of the iceberg draft. image credit: A. FitzMaurice 6" WHOI logo REVISED JP [Converted] The Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution is dedicated to research and education to advance understanding of the ocean and its interaction with the Earth system, and to communicating this understanding for the benefit of society. Learn more » WHOI Research Areas of Research Departments & Centers Ships & Technology Scientific Services WHOI Academics Graduate Postdoctorate Undergraduate Accreditation © Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. All Rights Reserved. Privacy Policy | Login General Information: information@whoi.edu or (508) 548-1400 | Website inquiries: webdev@whoi.edu | Media inquiries:...