I was very honoured to be asked to give a short talk last week to some students at the Danish Technical University. The subject was ice sheet modelling and climate at DMI where I work in the Research department, climate and Arctic section.
I thought this could be interesting for others to look at too, so I have uploaded the powerpoint presentation on my academia.edu page.
In the presentation I try to explain why we are interested in climate and ice sheets and then give a brief overview of our model systems and the projects we are currently working on. We are mainly interested in the Greenland ice sheet from the perspective of sea level rise. If we are to climate change we need to know how fast and how much of Greenland will melt and how this will change local and regional sea level. There are also studies showing that increased run-off from the ice sheet may change ocean circulation patterns and sea ice. There is lots more stuff to look at so feel free to download it.
I end up with a very brief overview of our biggest project at the moment, ice2ice. This is a large ERC funded project with the Niels Bohr Institute and partners in Bergen at the Bjerknes Climate Research Centre. I may write a brief post on ice2ice soon if I get chance. It’s a really interesting piece of work being focused on past glacial-interglacial climate change rather than present day or the future and I think we have potential to do some great science with it.
At the risk of seeming like I’m blowing the DMI trumpet (something rarely done or even really seen as socially acceptable in Denmark!), I think we at DMI have a lot to be proud of. We are a small group from a small country with limited resources but my colleagues have pioneered high resolution regional climate modelling of the Greenland ice sheet and the development of coupled climate and ice sheet models at both regional and global scales. I was brought in as a glaciologist to work on the interface between ice sheet and atmosphere, needless to say I have learnt a hell of lot here. It’s been an exhilarating few years.
If you have any questions, I will enable comments for this thread (but with moderation so it may take a while for you to see it).
Finally, here is a little movie of calving icebergs
shot by Jason Amundson, University of Alaska Fairbanks at Jakobshavn Isbrae in West Greenland.
Sterna Paradisaea 