Dr. Fiamma Straneo of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute will speak in the EAPS Oceanography and Climate Sack Lunch Seminar Series. Abstract: The Greenland Ice Sheet's contribution to sea level rise more than doubled in the last seven years, mostly because of the acceleration of outlet glaciers in its southeastern and western sectors. Roughly at the same time, the waters of the North Atlantic's subpolar region started to warm – prompting several investigators to suggest that the ocean warming has triggered the ice sheet changes. Yet, evidence supporting the /warm ocean trigger/ is scarce, to a large extent because of the widespread lack of observations from Greenland's glacial fjords and coastal region. In this study, we present newly collected data from one large glacier/fjord system (Helheim Glacier and Sermilik Fjord) in East Greenland that show how the warm (and warming) offshore waters circulate deep within the fjord and, thus, provide a rapid and direct connection between the ocean and the glacier. Since the mechanisms responsible for the inflow of warm waters into the fjord, towards the glacier, are not unique to this system, we argue that the ocean warming is likely to have affected other outlet glaciers. Finally, we use an extensive ocean database to investigate the origin of the subpolar warming and, in particular, its attribution to variability driven by the North Atlantic Oscillation. (Dr. Staneo's website)