New Artica Writings essay by Dr Frank Nilsen

We are delighted to share the fourth essay for this year’s Artica Writings: When sea ice melted despite the bitter cold / Da sjøis smeltet i frysende kulde by Dr Frank Nilsen, Professor of Physical Oceanography at The University Centre in Svalbard (UNIS).

Dr Frank Nilsen has been a resident of Longyearbyen for over 20 years and this essay gives an insight into his work and passion for the sea.

I was supposed to live farther south, but as I sat on a plane bound north to Longyearbyen over 20 years ago, seeing Svalbard for the first time – the landscape cloaked with snow and ice and, not least, the sea and the fjord covered with sea ice – my life and my career took a new course.

Other articles from this years series inspired by the UN Decade of Ocean Science for Sustainable Development (2021 - 2030), including Holly Corfield Carr’s Less, less, less, less, less: on listening to shells, and all previous Artica Writings essays can be read here.