The Nansen Scientific Society (NANSI) was founded as an ideal independent foundation under the slogan “Knowledge without borders”. During these 15 years 52 students have been supported with educational or mobility grants, 11 research schools have been co-funded and the overall activities have resulted in 60 scientific publications. The Nansen Center congratulates NANSI with its great achievements for the first 15 years.

11 students and researchers from NERSC and the University of Bergen participated in a 3-day cruise to Bjørnafjorden south of Bergen and the surrounding area, with the Norwegian Coast Guard vessel KV Tor. The cruise was a part of the SFI Smart Ocean project preparing for a mesoscale observing system using acoustic technology.

Edson Silva just published his first article as part of his institutional PhD project - congratulations! Together with five other co-authors from NERSC and one from the University of Bergen (UiB), he studied the annual cycle of phytoplankton/algae blooms in the Nordic Seas by utilizing satellite data from 2000-2020.

What is phytoplankton?

A new publication in Nature shows that a shift in air circulation is responsible for the eastern African climate having changed to dry conditions about two million years ago. The authors studied a marine core to prove their hypothesis. Björn Backeberg is a co-author – he has an adjunct position with NERSC and is affiliated with Deltares in the Netherlands and the Nansen-Tutu Centre for Marine Environmental Research in South Africa.

Denis Demchev (OSIRS group) and Valeria Selyuzhenok (Zubrov State Oceanographic Institute, Russia) recently published a study introducing a fully-automated method to track fast ice and stamukhi in Arctic coastal zones. Their method is faster and more objective than manually-produced operational sea-ice charts and can provide near-real time information!

Fast ice and stamukhi in the Arctic

In June, our Acoustic and Oceanography Group organized a research cruise onboard the Norwegian Coast Guard Vessel KV Svalbard. Students and experienced scientists worked side by side to collect sea-ice and oceanographic data. Engagement and involvement are essential to train the new generation of scientists in conducting Arctic field work. 

The Nansen Center joins partnership with companies and organisations in the Norwegian-British Chamber of Commerce (NBCC).

Works from 19 of our current researchers are used in the most recent IPCC report released on the 9^th of August this year.

Sebastian Mernild, our former director and now pro-rector and professor in climate change and glaciology at the University of Southern Denmark and in an adjunct position with us, is one of the Lead Authors contributing to the report!

Extreme weather events indicate climate change is here