Studying ancient DNA stored in ocean sediments, can help understand the role of sea ice in our global climate. Through the EU-funded AGENSI project, scientists at NORCE and the Bjerknes Centre are recovering and analysing sediment of more than 130,000 years old.

In the frozen ground in the northern parts of the globe, vast amounts of carbon is stored. The global permafrost is estimated to hide three times as much carbon as there is in the atmosphere today. Inge Althuizen has been going on field work in Northern Norway for some years. Here she has observed and measured thawing permafrost. In her talk, she shows how global warming is changing a frozen landscape.  

The fastest flowing glacier! By the Disco Bay at the west coast of Greenland, we find the Illulissat Icefjord, a UNESCO World Heritage site. This fjord is the outlet of the glacier Sermeq Kujalleq, also called the Jakobshavn Isbræ. It is measured to be the fastest moving glacier in Greenland, and the glacier produces more ice bergs than any other in Greenland. The rate of the glacier retreat is controlled by the fjord geometry. Today the glacier is by a tipping point, as further retreat will send the glacier front downhill.

Animation: Eli Muriaas (2022)

Inès Ollivier spent a year in Antarctica where she tended instruments that gives us an understanding on how snow accumulates into the massive ice sheet that we know as the Antarctic. Now she is well into her first year as a PhD-student in the EU-funded DEEPICE project. In this project they studies proxies in deep ice cores to understand the past climate dynamics in Antarctica.

Inès Ollivier is a PhD-student at the Geophysical institute, UoB, and a Bjerknes Centre researcher. Learn about her work together with our host Stephen Outten from Nansen Environmental and Remote Sensing Center and co-host Ingjald Pilskog from Western Norway University of Applied Sciences.

The great ice-sheets in Antarctica and Greenland holds many mysteries. David Chandler, a postdoctoral fellow at the Bjerknes Centre and NORCE, are trying together with his colleagues to unravel these mysteries. In this episode David Chandler takes Stephen Outten and Ingjald Pilskog to the Antarctica where we are discussing how global warming are melting the ice-sheet, in some places irreversibly, leading to sea level rise and life altering climate changes to people all over the globe.

David Chandler is a postdoctoral fellow at NORCE and Bjerknes Centre for Climate Research.

Stephen Outten is a researcher at Nansen Environmental and Remote Sensing Center and Bjerknes Centre for Climate Research.

Ingjald Pilskog is an associated professor at Western Norway University of Applied Sciences and connected to the Bjerknes Centre for Climate Research.