Nina Kirchner is Senior Lecturer in Numerical Ice Sheet Modeling and leader of the research area Orbital to tectonic climate variability at Bolin Centre for Climate Research and the Department of Physical Geography and Quaternary Geology at Stockholm University.

She is also co-principal investigator of the MUST (Mobile Underwater System Tools) project. With funding received recently from the Knut and Alice Wallenberg Foundation, an Autonomous Underwater Vehicle (AUV) will be purchased and sent on missions exploring some of the most hostile environments on Earth: The perennially sea ice covered polar oceans. Designed to be ‘under-ice-going’, the AUV will sensors of various kinds (including cameras) provide observations of the physical, chemical, biological, hydrological and geological parameters and processes in some of the most poorly observed system on Earth, the seafloor in the polar oceans.

Ninas Kirchners research interests are numerical paleo-glaciology, with special focus on circum-Arctic and Antarctic glaciations, ice-ocean interaction, and marine ice margin dynamics. Running computer models for paleo-ice sheet behavior – of which ample evidence is stored in natural archives, such as the seafloor -  has entrained Nina into the world of ‘real data’, and led to her active involvement in polar marine research. She has participated in a number of icebreaker-expeditions to the Arctic (Barents Sea, East Siberian Sea, Central Arctic Ocean), and the Antarctic (Amundsen Sea, Ross Sea), working with marine geophyiscal mapping, coring and analysis of oftentimes uncharted seafloor. She is also co-leader of the Bolin Centres Research Area 6 (Orbital to Tectonic Climate Variability), which is a scientific meeting place dedicated to advance knowledge on the full range of  climate variability on Earth by integrating combined observational and theoretical expertise.

Click here to see a video with Nina Kirchner on ice sheet modelling made by the University of the Arctic.

Related links

• The Bolin Centre for Climate Research
• Journal of Glaciology
• CV Nina Kirchner