List of ongoing PhD-projects
List of previous PhD-projects
From Black Gold to the Green Battery?
The Future of Folgefonna ice cap, hydropower potential, and societal constraints
PhD candidate Rebekka Frøystad
Affiliation
About the research project
My research centers around the glacier Folgefonna in Western Norway. The glacier has been shown to respond quickly to climate change in the past. Therefore, both hydropower facilities at and people living nearby Folgefonna are expected to be affected by current climate change. Despite this, little is known about how the glacier will evolve in the future.
By using the energy and mass balance model BESSI (The BErgen Snow SImulator), I model how the firn of the glacier responds to future climate change. BESSI has in the past only been applied to the Greenland ice sheet. To achieve useful results for a small glacier such as Folgefonna, I work on further developing BESSI to account for small-scale effects such as shading due to topography. The results from BESSI will in the future be included in an ice flow model (ISSM). From this, changes in meltwater runoff and possibilities for hydropower expansion in the area can be estimated.
I also collaborate with researchers at the Department for Comparative Politics to get a more comprehensive understanding of how glacier melt in Norway will impact society. By fielding survey experiments to elected representatives, I investigate how politicians approach future changes in nature and what this means for hydropower production.
Project period: September 2021 - August 2025
This PhD project is funded by the University of Bergen's Climate and Energy Transition initiative (https://www.uib.no/en/climateenergy).
People
Close allProject members
Rebekka FrøystadPhD Student
Funding
Fluid inclusion microthermometry in speleothems and its application to low latitude temperature reconstructions
PhD candidate: Marit Holten Løland
Affiliation
Duration
August 2021–August 2025
About the research project
The aim of this Ph.D. project is to further develop and apply a new method for reconstructing past temperatures known as fluid inclusion microthermometry in speleothems (cave formations). Speleothems are valuable terrestrial climate archives. They reside within a stable environment beneath the surface, can capture numerous physical and chemical properties in their layers, and coupled with chronology from U/Th dating, can be used to reconstruct paleoclimate records. The fluid inclusion microthermometry method is based on the physical properties of relict drip water (fluid inclusions) trapped in the speleothems. The density of the water is directly related to the cave temperature at the time when the inclusion sealed off from the environment and can be determined by observing the phase behavior during a cooling and heating cycle.
The first objective of this Ph.D. project is to further improve the accuracy of the method by identifying potential factors and mechanisms influencing the phase behavior in speleothem fluid inclusions. The second objective is to apply the method to produce terrestrial temperature records from low-latitude speleothems covering the last glacial-interglacial transition, with the goal to improve our understanding of the low-latitude response to large climatic shifts in the past.
Project Period: August 2021 – August 2025
This Ph.D. project is part of the Fluid Inclusion Microthermometry in Speleothems (FluidMICS) project, which is funded by the European Research Council.
People
Close allProject members
Marit Holten LølandPhD Student
Funding
The Research Council of Norway
Holocene sub-polar glacier fluctuations and glaciovolcanic floods
Lake sediments constitute natural archives reflecting past changes in the surrounding depositional environment. This PhD project is part of the NFR-funded project Southsphere and BCCR-funded project DYNASOR and highlights the use and versatility of lake sediments as palaeoenvironmental records.
Affiliation
About the research project
Kerguelen Archipelago - Southsphere
Recent observations of ice wastage among SH mid-latitude alpine glaciers is chiefly attributed to a poleward migration and intensification of the SH westerlies associated with a continued positive phase in the Southern Annular Mode, the prevailing mode of natural climate variability in the SH mid-high latitude. By harnessing the potential of distal-fed glacial lakes to record continuous glacier fluctuations in the SH westerlies core belt this part of the PhD project aims to unravel new information on the past behaviour of this globally relevant atmospheric circulation system.
Northern Iceland - DYNASOR
Large volumes of abruptly drained meltwater can reshape landscapes and disrupt ocean circulation. This part of the PhD project aims to reconstruct the frequency and magnitude of Early Holocene glaciovolcanic floods along the proglacial river Jökulsá á Fjöllum in northern Iceland by utilizing the potential of threshold lakes to capture slackwater deposits during floods combined with hydraulic simulations. Iceland is located near the confluence of multiple ocean surface currents suggesting relatively small perturbations in the form of meltwater pulses may affect global ocean circulation
Funding
The Reserach Council of Norway
Holocene shifts in the frequency, magnitude and seasonality of floods across southern Norway
PhD Student: Carl Regnéll
This PhD project is funded by NVE, the University of Bergen, and the Bjerknes Centre for Climate Research.
Duration
October 2018–July 2023
About the research project
Over the last decades we have witnessed a change in the timing and frequency of river floods in Norway. This change is believed to be spurred by contemporary global warming and calls for an improved understanding of how climate affects the activity of floods in different river systems. A major challenge of flood risk assessment in society is that instrumental data records are too short to capture the full range of long-term natural flood variability. To extend our knowledge of past flood activity beyond instrumental and historical data records we use lake sediments to reconstruct past flood events across southern Norway. Lakes are natural sediment archives, which through various proxies, reveal information about the processes in the catchment over time.
Photo: Foto/ill.: Snorre Birkelund Wille
People
PhD Student Carl Regnéll
Mountain glacier-rock glacier interactions
Exploring glacier-rock glacier transition on large spatial and temporal scales
About the research project
In response to deglaciation, newly exposed paraglacial material may destabilise and, through slope modification processes, add supraglacial debris coverage to the ice below. A thick, continuous debris cover will insulate the underlying ice from solar radiation, reducing ablation rates and increasing the longevity of glacial freshwater stores. Supraglacial debris can significantly alter a glacier’s dynamics and behaviour. Recent studies have shown that, given certain dynamics and conditions, debris-covered glaciers may transition into rock glaciers.
Rock glaciers have enhanced climatic resilience compared to debris-free and debris-covered glaciers, allowing rock glaciers to persist in valleys and provide freshwater long after glacier recession. In the context of a warming climate, the hydrological value of rock glaciers as high-altitude frozen freshwater stores will become increasingly significant. However, our current knowledge of glacier-rock glacier transition is considerably poor, but if the process is widespread, the high mountain cryosphere and its freshwater stores may be more resilient to climatic change than previously estimated.
My PhD project aims to provide insight into and continue developing hypotheses regarding the evolution of glacier-rock glacier complexes over large spatial and temporal scales using field and remote sensing techniques. Improving our understanding of the transitional process and its implications is critically important if effective water resource management strategies are to be successfully implemented to mitigate or adapt to the impacts of climatic change.
Constraining a warmer wetter Arctic using lipid biomarkers in lake sediments from Svalbard during Early Holocene
This PhD project is part of the Past constraints on a warmer and wetter future Arctic climate (PASTFACT) project funded by the Trond Mohn Stiftelse (TMS).
About the research project
My PhD project is “Constraining a warmer wetter Arctic using lipid biomarkers in lake sediments from Svalbard during Early Holocene, which aims to deepen our understanding of the magnitude and seasonality of hydroclimate change in a warmer wetter Arctic by utilizing lipid biomarker (δD and 𝑈37𝐾) proxies on the Early Holocene lake sediments from Svalbard.
Arctic amplification has been occurring faster in the Arctic region compared to other regions globally. As the Arctic warms, the hydrological cycle also intensifies, which contributes to higher precipitation rate during the 21 st century and this condition will continue as shown from the predicted future projection. However, the uncertainty of future projection is poorly constrained, in terms of temperature and precipitation changes, which resulted from the climatic models calibrated with instrumental data as the future change is likely to exceed that projected range. Therefore, this uncertainty of prediction in temperature-precipitation and seasonality effects could bring impact tothe phase and magnitude of precipitation.
To better constrain the past seasonality and temperature changes during warmer-than-present conditions, I choose Early Holocene (11.7-8.2 ka BP) to help me bring focus on the condition that is likely occur in the Arctic in the future. Due to their capability of preserving high-resolution geological records, non-glacial-fed lake sediments of Åsgardfonna located on Northern Svalbard are chosen as these lake sediments are not eroded by the ice sheet advances and able to record the drivers of seasonal atmospheric changes, which will help my project to examine the response of the Arcticduring warmer-than-present past periods.
Throughout my PhD years, I will measure the highly laminated non-glacial-fed lakes using a multi-proxy toolbox which I aim to tackle in terms of the sedimentology (Computed Tomography scanning,X-Ray Fluorescence, grain size analysis, organic matter content), leaf waxes paleohydrology (δD), and alkenone paleothermometry (𝑈37𝐾). By integrating these approaches with lake sediment-based reconstructions of glacier change from the same area, my project will help us to better understand the trajectory of Arctic glacier change under warmer-than-present conditions.
People
Willem van der BiltUiB
Funding
Trond Mohn Stiftelse (TMS)
Future Sea-level Contributions and Stability of the Greenland Ice Sheet
My name is Charlotte, I am a PhD candidate at the Norwegian Research Centre (NORCE) and the Department of Earth Science at UiB. I have a background in boundary layer meteorology, but recently shifted my focus to glaciology. In my PhD project I am modeling the Greenland ice sheet and its interaction with the future climate using the community ice sheet model (CISM).
About the research project
The Greenland ice sheet is one of the largest contributors to sea-level rise today and is expected to continue losing mass in the future under increasing Arctic warming. Therefore, reducing uncertainties in projections of future sea-level contribution from the Greenland ice sheet is of high importance.
In my research project I investigate the response of the ice sheet to climate change in the short-term and long-term, respectively and determine upper bounds for future rates of sea level contribution. The results will serve as input for planners working on protection plans for cities and infrastructure in coastal areas worldwide. Furthermore, I will use a coupled modeling setup (Norwegian Earth System Model (NorESM) coupled with CISM) to constrain climate change trajectories that lead to a future stabilization of the Greenland ice sheet until 2500. My work will contribute to the evaluation of global mitigation targets to avoid a substantial loss of the Greenland ice sheet.
Ensemble projections: Sea-level contribution from the Greenland ice sheet until 2100 for different climate forcings. The ice sheet is initialized with annual surface mass balance (mean over 1960-1989) from ERA5 reanalysis data (dashed lines) and with annual surface mass balance (mean over 1960-1989) from the respective Global Circulation Model (GCM).
People
Charlotte Rahlves - PhD Student (UiB)