I moved to Denmark

I’ve started a postdoc in Denmark, at the Center for Ice and Climate (now called Physics of Ice, Climate and Earth). I am really excited to be here, both for the opportunity to work in a new environment and because there is so much expertise in glaciology and ice-core science. I’m funded to work on a project called “Iceflow,” which generally aims to learn about ice flow in Northeast Greenland, taking advantage of the new ice core project there. I’m still homing in on exactly what I will do, but I’m starting to spin up some models to look at effects of anisotropy on the core (more coming on what that means soon!).

In April, I packed up all of my stuff from Seattle (mostly kayaks and skis), drove it all to my parents’ basement near Chicago, and flew to Copenhagen. The drive to Chicago was kind of fun–Julia joined me, and we were able to stop for a day to ski at Big Sky with some blue sky, fresh-ish April Powder, and the upper mountain completely open. We also took a slight detour down to pass through the Badlands–I had been 12 years ago but Julia had never been, and she was excited about the paleosols.

Late April was a great time to show up in Denmark. The days have been long for the first few months that I have been here, leaving plenty of time to bike around the city in the light and to start get to know the place. I had a week to buy a bike, start to sort out the financial and administrative aspects of moving internationally, and fill the tiny fridge with some food.

Just after I arrived, the Greenland field season began to start up as the EastGRIP (GReenland Ice-core Project) camp opened. Many of the students, staff, and faculty cycle through trips to work at the camp through the course of the summer, so the office quickly emptied out. In addition, the Danes seem to value work-life balance in a way that is totally foreign to me as an American, and the office cleared out almost entirely through most of July. It was a great, quiet summer though, and having few people around was nice for getting things spinning up here without distraction. Julia was able to visit for much of the summer, and we were able to travel on weekends.

As soon as it was time to get back in the swing of things, preparations began to ramp up for the upcoming Antarctic season. I’ll be going to Little Dome C to do some of the final site surveying for the Beyond Epica Oldest Ice drilling. More on that to come!