Waiting for a polar bear

Sunday and Monday were pretty foggy and cloudy again. We spent the whole day on discharge measurements in Arie and Fuglebekken catchments. We took water samples for estimation of suspended sediment concentration. Turbidity meter was installed at Arie river, which took us a while, but it seems working well. Hopefully no polar fox will bite …

Wind, weather and waterfalls

Waterfalls doesn’t necessarily mean that water falls. Sometimes it is blown away before it can reach the ground. Thankfully, it only rarely blew all the water into my face… Some days I spent much more of my time than I would have liked battling the wind. The gusts were strong and my equipment is relatively …

Starting the work at Hornsund

We arrived to Hornsund on Thursday early in the morning and went on shore just around 9 o´clock. We spent morning exploring the station and went outside in the afternoon to see the famous Hansbreen – probably one of the most studied tidewater glaciers in Svalbard. On the way back we checked the location of …

Heading towards the Hornsund station – southern Svalbard

We are heading towards the Polish Polar station in Hornsund, southern Svalbard. Our goal is to set up the runoff measurements in two or three catchments in the vicinity of the station. We would like to compare the runoff from glaciated and unglaciated catchments and establish the relation between runoff, atmospheric forcings and glacier ablation. …

On preparedness

“Victory awaits him who has everything in order – luck, people call it” These famous words of Roald Amundsen, polar explorer and leader of the first expedition to the South Pole, are on my office coffee mug and have always seemed a very applicable quote to my PhD project. The other office mug I have …

Cold Ice in a Warm Bath; The Next Stage…

Norra Kaskasapakte glaciar in Arctic Sweden, fieldwork was undertaken here in 2017 and will be undertaken here again in 2019 (Photo: F. Falcini July 2017). The final stages of completing a PhD are a challenging time, with high pressures to do justice to several years of research with good writing combined with the insecurity of …

Why the Faroe Islands?

Around the world, organic soils store an incredibly large proportion of the terrestrial carbon pool. As the climate changes, these soils are releasing more carbon to the atmosphere, both directly as carbon dioxide, and indirectly, via water. Once the carbon is in surface waters, such as streams, rivers, reservoirs and lakes, it can decompose releasing …

Travelling around the Faroe Islands

I had a couple of streams and lakes I wanted to visit on the south end of Eysturoy. These are approximately 5 km away from Tórshavn, and driving there is possible, thanks to a bridge across the Atlantic, here called Sundini. However, the drive is quite spectacular. It’s 70 km and takes over an hour …

Arriving in the Faroe Islands

My first view of the Faroe Islands was from the small window on my sparsely populated plane. I could see islands, looking like giant rocks jutting out of the sea. There was quite a lot of snow on the higher peaks. Coming in to land at the airport on Vágar is quite an experience. The …

Organo-Mineral Interactions in Permafrost Environments

Permafrost soils store large amounts of carbon (C) as organic matter (OM), which upon thaw can be decomposed to greenhouse gases that then fuel further global warming. The extent of permafrost disturbances is predicted to increase across Arctic landscapes, which may lead to enhanced release of permafrost OM to water bodies. On its way to …