
Interdisciplinary research in the Arctic
Start of cruise with Research Vessel (R/V) Kronprins Haakon to look at winter processes in the northern Barents Sea and adjacent part of the Arctic Ocean.
Read MoreStart of cruise with Research Vessel (R/V) Kronprins Haakon to look at winter processes in the northern Barents Sea and adjacent part of the Arctic Ocean.
Read MoreThe story about 16 Nansen Legacy researchers on a cruise in the Arctic Ocean continues. This time we meet “The Captain” and a troublesome ice floe
Read MoreWhen Gandalf the Grey was struck by the Barlog and fell into the depths of the mountain at the bridge of Khazad dum, the Fellowship despaired. They had lost and old friend and their guide. When the underwater robot Harald did not return to the surface after a routine mission, the scientists on board the R/V Kronprins Haakon despaired.
Read MoreAfter almost a week on the Nansen Legacy winter process cruise, we now sail into the sea ice and stay there until we go south to Tromsø towards the end of February. A couple of days ago we saw the sun just above the horizon, and for us living in Longyearbyen it was a great moment of joy, having been four months without the sun!
Read MoreWe left Longyearbyen on Tuesday evening 12th of February and have sailed south and east in search of ice. After four days, R/V Kronprins Haakon has reached 35 degrees east. Pancake ice is the first stage in ice forming and a clear sign that there have been waves in swing. We will measure these waves with a small instrument that stands on a stake in front of the bow. We have tried already, but after two days in open sea, it was covered with so much ice from sea spray that we almost did not get the instrument back on deck.
Read MoreWhen the first Fram-expedition returned to Norway in 1896, after three years frozen into the ice of the Arctic Ocean, a crew of 13 men was enthusiastically welcomed home and celebrated as heroes, above all the young Fridtjof Nansen. Hundred and twenty-five years after Fram, research vessels are exploring the Arctic Ocean on more regular basis, and onboard are men no longer among themselves. Women have become important contributors to the scientific exploration of the Arctic Ocean.
Read MoreOn February 9th, R/V Kronprins Haakon departs on a winter process cruise to the Barents Sea in order to track and measure important processes taking place in the ocean during wintertime.
Read MorePeople from the Nansen Legacy participating in Arctic Frontiers 2021.
Read MoreWhat do you think of when you think of the Arctic ocean? Belugas weaving through ice floes? Or maybe walruses sunbathing on a chilly beach? How about a polar bear hunting for its next seal snack?
Read MoreInterview with Louise Steffensen Schmidt (The Nansen Legacy), Postdoc at the Department of Geosciences, University of Oslo. Recently, she presented her research work in the lecture: Variability in glacier meltwater runoff to the Barents Sea, at the 3rd Nansen Legacy annual meeting, 10-12 November 2020.
Read MoreThe jet stream is a highway for cyclones, while the sea ice edge has been thought to be a fuel station. Erica Madonnas new study shows that the fuel for cyclones is not simply linked to the location of the ice edge. She explains Barents Sea cyclones as a traffic system.
Read MoreIn science, it is difficult to understand the whole picture when you only have fractions. As a puzzle, the Barents Sea is lacking some of the pieces to be a complete picture that you can hang on the wall.
Read MoreScientists in movies and on television are often presented as brilliant people, knowing exactly what they do and what they want to achieve, furthermore, their experiments always succeed. That is, if they fail, they fail spectacularly, becoming mutants, blowing up the world or some such. This post is about real scientists and failing unspectacularly.
Read MoreWhen ocean waters with different properties, such as temperature, salinity and density, meet, they form a “front”. Ocean fronts are often rich in productivity and marine life, with high zooplankton and fish larvae concentrations. This makes fronts attractive for fishing vessels for obvious reasons
Read MoreUnderstanding who eats who is important to describe how nutrition and energy move between species in marine ecosystems. The field of research is flourishing like never before thanks to new technology and more advanced methods. These allow us to uncover hitherto unknown connections that occasionally shake up known paradigms in ecology.
Read MoreA first modelling study on the implementation of the “Balanced Harvesting” approach to fisheries management in the Barents Sea.
Read MoreRecent “Atlantification” of the Arctic is characterized by warmer ocean temperatures and a reduced sea ice cover. The Barents Sea is a “hot spot” for these changes, something which has broad socioeconomic and environmental impacts in the region. However, there is, at present, no complete understanding of what is causing the ocean warming.
Read MoreWarm Atlantic water (AW) that flows northward along the Svalbard west coast is thought to
transport enough heat to melt regional Arctic sea ice effectively. Despite this common assumption, quantitative requirements necessary for AW to directly melt sea ice fast enough under realistic winter conditions are still poorly constrained.
Last winter an almost forgotten sight presented itself to all those venturing the Barents Sea: sea ice as far south as Bjørnøya, equaling a sea-ice extent not seen since the eighties and nineties. Are you wondering how this is possible in times of global warming and a diminishing Arctic ice cap?
Read MorePolar cod is a key fish species, transferring energy from zooplankton to larger animals. Polar cod depend on sea ice for spawning and during the early parts of its life. Reduced ice cover may therefore influence the survival and growth of young polar cod directly through e.g. loss of predation refuge, and indirectly by e.g. affecting the abundance and availability of prey.
Read MoreWe are proud to share a glimpse of our many project activities from 2019. The report highlights of the new scientific knowledge that has started to emerge. It presents some of our research activities, our scientists and recruits.
Read MoreI am privileged. I have worked in some of the most remote places on this planet, and I have seen forms of life that only few know of, some of which have not yet gotten a name.
Read MoreThe Arctic sea ice is on the move all year. It expands to its maximum during March and reaches its minimum in September. The variation during the year, and from year to year, depends on wind, weather and ocean currents. But the Arctic is changing.
Read MoreNumerical models help us to make sense of complicated data or to test our hypotheses. For this reason, they are increasingly used in studies and analyses supporting fisheries and ecosystem
Read MoreSIDE EVENTS ARCTIC FRONTIERS Organised by Marit Reigstad and Alf Hakon Hoel, UiT – the Arctic University of Norway. What does it take to manage fisheries sustainably? Drawing on experiences
Read MoreSIDE EVENTS ARCTIC FRONTIERS Organized by The Nansen Legacy How can knowledge from a science project reach users and policy makers? And how can we increase the competence among scientists
Read MoreIn times of climate change and retreating sea ice, important research questions are for example: How important are sea ice algae as a food source for organisms such as copepods, krill and fish? Are they affected by the sea ice retreat and if so, how will that affect the functioning of the Arctic ecosystem?
Read MoreA couple of days ago when we were sailing between two of our process stations, we came across a beautiful icy garden covered with frost flowers. So we decided to go picking them.
Read MoreAs the polar night lowers over the Arctic, RV Kronprins Haakon is leaving the quay in Longyearbyen, heading towards the Arctic Ocean. For the next two weeks, the researchers and technicians on board will retrieve old and deploy new scientific measuring equipment in the sea area around Svalbard.
Read MoreVladimir Savinov, a researcher at Akvaplan-niva (APN), is among the scientific crew on the R/V Dalnie Zelentsy, a 55 m Russian ship conducting monitoring surveys in the eastern Barents Sea.
Read MoreBy taking into consideration the insulating effect of snow on top of sea ice, researchers improve our weather forecasting capabilities in the Arctic.
Read MoreThe Arctic’s once impenetrable ice cap is melting away, with profound consequences for everything from ocean circulation patterns to fish numbers and diversity. The Nansen Legacy Project, including NTNU biologists,
Read MoreIn July 1873 some nets were put out by whalers in Raudfjorden in Svalbard, to obtain food. They had expected to catch Arctic char but ended up filling the nets with cod.
Read MoreNorway has always been a polar nation. The search for Arctic marine natural resources gave Norwegians early experience and knowledge of Arctic waters, which were later strengthened and systematically described
Read MoreWhile you are still enjoying the warm summer and a rich selection of fruits and berries, a large-scale preparation for winter is happening further North. In the Northern Barents Sea
Read MorePhoto: Ann Kristin Balto / Norwegian Polar Institute The annual report for 2018 is ready, and can be downloaded here. The first year of the Nansen Legacy is successfully completed.
Read MoreThe sea ice extent in the Barents Sea was back to normal this winter. A paradox? Actually not. This text was published in Aftenposten (online and print) 23 April 2019.
Read MoreSeptember onboard the research vessel Lance north of Svalbard. Kristen, our mooring engineer, is happy. There is no sea ice to be seen anywhere – ideal conditions to find the instruments we left here two years ago attached to a rope, anchored to the seafloor, and held upright under water by several buoys.
Read MoreFridtjof Nansen set out to explore the Arctic Ocean with the research vessel Fram 126 years ago. His team of explorers and scientists returned from the ice three years later with new knowledge that changed our concepts and understanding of the Arctic Ocean, and made the Arctic part of Norwegian identity.
Read MoreChanges in the marine environment are causing shifts in ecosystems north of Svalbard.
Read MoreCentral to the fieldwork of the project is the research vessel Kronprins Haakon. It has been built to operate in challenging ice conditions, which means it can go further north and south than
Read MoreTwo interesting PhD positions available in the Human Impact: Pollution task of the Nansen Legacy project, one at UiO and one at UNIS.
Read MoreThe UK-based project Changes of the Arctic Ocean Seafloor (ChAOS) joined the last Nansen Legacy research cruise with two scientists from the University of Leeds, UK. Mark Zindorf and Allyson Tessin describe their work and motivation to join the Nansen Legacy cruise.
Read MoreThe Arctic Frontiers Partnership Network seminar Green Solutions for a sustainable future took place in Shanghai recently, as part of the official Norwegian state visit to China.
Read MoreOn September 12th 2018, R/V Kronprins Haakon left Longyearbyen on the second cruise in the research project named “the Nansen Legacy”. Its goal, to study oceanographic processes north of Svalbard, in order to understand the effects of changes in the water masses due to inflow of Atlantic water masses.
Read MoreIn a newly published Nansen Legacy study, scientists Yurii Batrak and Malte Müller from the Norwegian Meterological Institute show how the resolution of the spatial sea ice characteristics in model simulations significantly influences the 12‐hr weather forecast in areas up to 500–1,000 km away from the sea ice edge.
Read MoreThe Nansen Legacy has left for its first paleo cruise to the northern Barents Sea. Onboard are 24 geologists and oceanographers on the search for understanding the Barents Sea’s past climate.
Read MoreThe Arctic is about to shrink, shows a new study, as an important part of the Arctic Ocean shifts over to an Atlantic climate regime. The rapid climate shift occurs in the northern Barents Sea—the Arctic warming hotspot where the surface warming and loss of winter sea ice is largest in the entire Arctic.
Read MoreHundred and twentyfive years after “Fram” left for its historic Arctic expedition, the new Norwegian research icebreaker “Kronprins Haakon” left Tromsø on August 6, for its first scientific expedition to the Barents Sea. Onboard are 32 Nansen Legacy scientists.
Read MoreIn a newly published article, Nansen Legacy researcher, Prof. Camille Li (UiB), and coworkers demonstrate how climate change will impact storm tracks.
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