Home
Quaternary geology and Paleoclimate

Deglaciation of the Norwegian fjords

PhD student: Henning Åkesson

Henning

Main content

Supervision: Kerim H. Nisancioglu (UiB), John Inge Svendsen (UiB)
Project funding: Norwegian Research Council
Project period: September 2014 - September 2017
Website: http://henningakesson.weebly.com/research.html

This project focuses on the behaviour of fjord glaciers, with the aim to
learn about those which drained the Fennoscandian Ice Sheet during the
last deglaciation, and those of Greenland today.

My focus is on understanding glaciological, topographic, climatic and
oceanic controls on the retreat of these marine outlet glaciers. My
tools are numerical ice flow models of varying complexity.

Many of Greenland’s marine outlet glaciers have thinned, accelerated and
retreated during the last two decades. Ocean warming is suggested to be
one of the main drivers of the resulting mass loss. However, recent
glacier changes involve considerable spatial and temporal variability.
Similarly, reconstructions of marine outlet glaciers in Greenland and
Norway indicate highly asynchronous retreat histories. This project
combines field data and modelling studies to assess to what extent
marine outlet glaciers are controlled by ocean or atmosphere warming, as
well as fjord geometry. This information is used to study how and why
the Norwegian fjords became ice-free at the end of the last glacial
period. Understanding deglaciation of the fjords in Norway may thus
provide important clues to what we can expect from the Greenland Ice
Sheet in the future.

The EISCLIM project (2014-2017)
My PhD project is a part of the Eurasian Ice Sheet and Climate
Interactions (EISCLIM) project, which focuses on the growth and decay of
the Eurasian ice sheet, and what forcings were responsible for these
changes. EISCLIM comprises geological reconstructions and modelling of
climate and ice dynamics on both the ice sheet wide and regional scales.