Coronavirus and Drone Research in Svalbard
A new article has published, to which I contributed. The paper describes the effect of the Corona pandemic on research activities in Svalbard. In the paper, I wrote about how the pandemic has affected drone missions that had been planned for a long time –…
How to find the right PhD position?
I often get asked by students if I would recommend taking a PhD. In this blog post, I will lay out my philosophy for choosing the right PhD position. I hope that by following my advice, you will make a better-educated decision about starting a…
How Unmanned Vehicles are used for Science in Svalbard
Today a report on the State of Environmental Science in Svalbard (SESS) was released during the SIOS Polar Night Week in Longyearbyen. It is the third issue of an annual series of reports published by the Svalbard Integrated Arctic Earth Observing System (SIOS). I wrote…
Impressions 2020
With the year coming to an end, it is a good opportunity to reflect upon the last 12 months. The year 2020 has certainly been a special year for all of us. For me, it certainly had some very special moments. It was a year…
Special Issue on Atmospheric Measurements with UAVs
I am going to be a guest editor for a special issue of MDPI’s Atmosphere journal on the topic of “Atmospheric Measurements Using Unmanned Systems”. This is my first time being on the “other side” of scientific publishing. I am very grateful for getting this…
Finding industrial pollutants in the Arctic and the Antarctic
I have been contributing to a paper that was recently published, where we investigated industrial pollutants found in locations in the Arctic and the Antartic. We analysed ice and firn cores from glaciers and ice sheets for polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) from two sites – one…
Mapping glaciers with drones in Svalbard – this is how we actually do it
Researchers at UNIS conduct fieldwork on Svalbard glaciers using drone technologies. The goal is to improve our understanding of how climate change accelerates the melting of glaciers. I wrote an article explaining how the drone fieldwork is conducted. A typical summer fieldwork day starts in…
Featured Article
Last week, I got called up by a journalist who wanted to interview me, after he read my blog post about the research grants we have been awarded. I was caught a bit off-guard but I am quite pleased how the interview turned out. The…
My research got funded with over 2 Million Euros
Two research projects on UAV icing, which I am part of, were recently funded by the Research Council of Norway with a total volume of 27 Million NOK (2.4 Million EUR). I am incredibly happy to see that the council recognized the importance of my…
Finding Industrial Pollutants on Svalbard Glaciers
In a recent article that I worked on, we studied winter snow samples from four glaciers on Svalbard. We analyzed the snow for organochlorine pesticides (OCPs) and found seven industrial compounds. These pesticides are categorized as persistent organic pollutants – this means that they degrade…