Cruising Isfjorden – RV Lance’s last research cruise
20 October 2017
13 students from the course AGF-214 Polar Ocean Climate recently spent a week on board RV Lance together with lecturers, researchers and technicians from UNIS. The research cruise was Lance’s last cruise before she was taken out of the Norwegian Polar Institute’s service.
Aurora forecast in 3D!
20 September 2017
The Aurora Forecast 3D app is released just in time for the dark season. It forecasts the aurora oval up to +0, +1, and +4 hours ahead in time at any location on the planet using a 3D graphical layout.
Apply for spring courses now
11 September 2017
Application is now open for UNIS spring courses. The application deadline is 15 October 2017.
Heating and vertical winds in dayside Aurora
10 May 2017
Åsmund Skjæveland has studied the details of the atmospheric mechanisms that take the energy from the northern lights and create warm and vertical winds. Skjæveland will defend his PhD thesis on Friday 12 May at the University of Oslo.
March for Science Longyearbyen: A big success!
22 April 2017
Today Longyearbyen marched for science. About 110 people gathered to march for science, not silence.
How much do YOU contribute to the melting of sea ice in the Arctic?
16 March 2017
The amount of Arctic sea ice in summer decreases every year. How much do you and I contribute to this? How much does a roundtrip by airplane to Oslo or the running of the Longyearbyen power plant contribute to the melting each year?
A dynamic study of the ionospheric footprint of the cusp/cleft over Svalbard
24 February 2017
The Earth’s cusp region is believed to be the main place of transport of the magnetosheath plasma into the ionosphere. PhD candidate Xiangcai Chen has analysed a long-term ground-based optical aurora and SuperDARN HF radar data over Svalbard to further understand the dynamics of the reconnection plasma process in the cusp region. Xiangcai will defend his PhD thesis at UNIS on 28 February.
Tunabreen may be surging decades earlier than expected
15 February 2017
Tunabreen, the iconic glacier in Tempelfjorden, is well-known to residents of Svalbard and the throngs of tourists that visit each year. The last known surge of Tunabreen was in 2004 and scientists have believed that the glacier has a 35–40 year surge interval, suggesting a new surge around year 2040. However, new satellite imagery suggests that Tunabreen is starting to surge now, decades earlier than expected.
Will there be ice on the Svalbard fjords this winter?
31 January 2017
Last winter we had record-low amount of fjord ice here in Svalbard and the following autumn was unusually warm. But these last few months have been relatively cold. Can we anticipate ice on the fjords this winter? The answer is yes – and no.