Danish Antarctic Science

Historically Denmark has not done a huge amount of Antarctic science. We are the only Nordic country (apart from Iceland) without an Antarctic station for example, but quite a lot of research has been done in collaboration with other countries. Of course you could argue that with our natural focus on Greenland and the Arctic, we don’t really need one…

The threat of sea level rise, with a large portion coming to Denmark from Antarctica has rather focused our minds on down south though and on this basis I now have several research projects with an Antarctic ice sheet and climate focus, including PolarRES, PROTECT and the just started OCEAN:ICE – I will write more on all of these at some point.

Of course it’s not just my employer DMI who knows that in spite of being far away, the coldest, driest, windiest continent is important in the global system and especially to Denmark in a sea level rise perspective. We have also been monitoring ozone and sea ice for decades and making ice charts for navigation when required also.

The Danish Technical University have also been flying remote sensing missions in Antarctica for decades and the Niels Bohr Institute have been involved in several big ice core projects, including the oldest ice core currently underway. GEUS and Aarhus University have geological interests and there are various biology research programmes underway too, while the IGN have a project using old soviet spy satellite imagery that sounds like a plot from a cold war novel…

All of which is to say, it’s time for a small get together to find out who is doing what, going where and when and who would like to plan and collaborate together on new and exciting projects.

The Danish Antarctic Science seminar, an annual event, will be held on the 2nd February at DMI this year and online. It covers all sciences, not just climate and ice sheet and this year we’d really like to get a broad group representative of the full spectrum of polar science in Denmark, so do feel free to register and listen in and discuss, even if you have no active or inactive projects in the Antarctic.

Let me know if you are a danish – based scientist and would like to come along or if you are otherwise interested and we’ll see what can be arranged. Deadline for registration is the 30th January!

Ses.