Stine presenting!
Just before Easter, Stine and Mary attended the 9th Sentinel Validation Team meeting, hosted by @esaearth.esa.int and @eumetsat.int in Frascati, Rome
Great discussions on ice sheet products and multi-sensor synergy. We can't wait for the upcoming #Sentinel‑3C launch and tandem phases 🚀🧊
#Sentinel3
@louisesandbergs.bsky.social and @nataliahavelund.bsky.social attended the CCI colocation meeting last week. There were many important discussions on the future of the programme. Thanks for having us!
Excited to kick off ESA’s HARMONY Validation Concept Consolidation & Verification Methodology project, managed by CLS.
Proud to lead land ice calibration & validation planning.
DTU team: Kristina, Sebastian & Stine.
Harmony (launch in 2029) will advance insights into land deformation & glaciers
🚨 Applications open!
Join us for The Polar Climate Space: a week‑long #hackathon (24–30 Aug) bringing together #ECRs to tackle #Arctic & #Antarctic challenges using #EO, #climate models, in‑situ data & #ML.
More info below!
👉 ECR form: tinyurl.com/ycy57mvj
👉 Senior scientists: tinyurl.com/2p9tv992
Big congrats to Anna for defending her PhD on surface mass balance using EO data 👏🎓✨
And of course, the celebration included a proper cake with P H D spelled out on top 🎂
#PhD #PhDDefense #SurfaceMassBalance #EarthObservation #Cryosphere
Last week, researchers came together for the Danish Antarctic Science Seminar at @ucph.bsky.social to discuss the most recent studies of Antarctic science! @tabea-rettelbach.bsky.social showed how the @esa.int Digital Twin can be used to explore "what-if" scenarios for the Antarctic Ice Sheet ❄️
Luckily, fresh snow had fallen—perfect timing for digging snow pits and examining layers, density, and structure during our field work.
Nothing like learning snow physics by literally digging into it. ❄️
❄️Theory and practice❄️ (Part 2)
This week in Sisimiut we continue our Extreme Climate and Physical Nature course on the Arctic Semester by diving into snow physics. After covering the theory, students headed into the field to explore the snowpack firsthand.
#CryoTeaching #ArcticDTU #SnowScien
And what did we find?
We observed rapid trough development within the first years after fire, followed by highly variable longer-term trajectories. Some landscapes retain strong degradation signals for decades, while others show signs of stabilization or at least surface smoothing.
Why is this interesting?
When 🔥 removes insulating vegetation and organic soil layers, the ground can thaw and subside faster, altering hydrology, C storage, and ecosystem dynamics.
With Arctic fires increasing under climate warming, it's critical to understand these long-term landscape responses.
New paper alert! 📄
How do Arctic tundra landscapes develop after a wildfire? 🔥
Using high-resolution lidar DEMs and a space-for-time approach, @tabea-rettelbach.bsky.social examined how ice-wedge polygon terrain in Alaskan permafrost landscapes changes following a fire.
doi.org/10.1088/1748...
❄️Theory and practice❄️
In Sisimiut, Greenland, we teach a DTU course called Extreme Climate and Physical Nature on the Arctic Semester. Earlier this week 30+ students practiced drilling in the ice on the lake in the center of town after learning the theory last week.
#CryoTeaching #ArcticDTU
Mikkel suited up for field work in front of a snowcooter on Svalbard
Northern lights visible over the mountains seen at night from a tent in the field
Our PhD Student @mikkelaabykruse.bsky.social is currently getting a taste of what it is like to do fieldwork in the Arctic at The University Centre in Svalbard (UNIS)❄️🥽 🧤 Working on a glacier is no safe or easy task, and UNIS is a great place to learn the ropes of what it means to be a glaciologist!
🚀 Excited for Copernicus @esa.int #CRISTAL! This mission’s dual‑freq Ka/Ku #altimeter aims to measure snow depth on sea ice. A new UiT‑led study (feat. @reneefredensborg.bsky.social) explores current laser/radar data + simulates CRISTAL waveforms. Check it out ➡️ tc.copernicus.org/articles/20/... ❄️🧊
One year into the ESA Digital Twin (DT) Earth Ice Sheets project ❄️@eo4cryo.bsky.social and @tabea-rettelbach.bsky.social with other @esa.int DTs at the science meeting in Frascati to present the pre-operational dtc-ice-sheets.org & new ideas for holistic data cubes 🛰️🌐 #DigitalTwinEarth #IceSheets
🍾🥂One of our most exciting pieces of news this month must be the hand-in of Anna Puggaard's PhD thesis on "Earth observation for surface mass balance" on January 15, celebrated with cake and bubbles! We look forward to seeing her in the office as a postdoc in February, after a well-deserved break! 🏝️
Overall, a critical and interesting study - definitely worth the read, if we do say so ourselves 😜 - and one of the first to synthesise measurements from multiple types of satellites and tackle the complicated issue of ice sheet firn evolution directly from space 🛰️
Supported by @esaearth.esa.int Living Planet Fellowship, this exciting study brings together a decade(!) #CryoSat-2 #SARAL/AltiKa and #SMOS satellite data to show how vertical heterogeneity in the Greenland firn layer evolved between 2013-2023, with important implications for storing surface melt!❄️
New paper hot off the press in #IEEE JSTARS from our very own @kirkscanlan.bsky.social rkscanlan.bsky.social and @eo4cryo.bsky.social along with @anja-ruti.bsky.social l from #GEUS 🔥🔥 Find it here ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/113...
📢 Going to #EGU26? Do you work with #radars on icy and rocky surfaces? ➡️Look no further!
Submit an abstract to this session, convened by our @kirkscanlan.bsky.social and @reneefredensborg.bsky.social with Hameed Moqadam! The deadline is fast approaching ⌛ - submit by 15 January 2026 at 13:00 CET!
Great to be at the 2026 Greenland Ice Sheet Seminar at the Niels Bohr Institute with cryosphere colleagues.
Photo: @kirkscanlan.bsky.social presenting for DTU Space.
#GreenlandIceSheet #Cryosphere #DTUSpace
🌟Meet our Group🌟
@mikkelaabykruse.bsky.social is a PhD student in the Cryo Group. He uses satellite remote sensing to study lakes hidden beneath the Greenland Ice Sheet 🛰️🧊🌊 Some of these lakes can contain and later release enormous amounts of meltwater. #Cryosphere #RemoteSensing #Greenland
To round off the year and just before Christmas, I had the amazing opportunity of spending the last week in Calgary, Alberta, meeting my colleagues at @ucalgary.bsky.social while participating in the ArcticNet's Annual Science Meeting #ASM25, and presenting my #MEOPAR funded project #SNOWMASS ❄️🛩️🛰️! ➡️
🌟Meet our Group🌟
Sebastian B. Simonsen (@eo4cryo.bsky.social) is a senior researcher using satellite altimetry to study ice sheets, sea-level change, snow, and ice dynamics. Lately focused on data-driven models and digital twins. PI for Digital Twin Ice Sheets. Also involved in C3S and CCI.
Our colleague @tabea-rettelbach.bsky.social is developing dynamic data cubes for #EO data over ice sheets (literally 🧊). The goal is to make complex geospatial datasets easier to find, access, and use for e.g. modelers. #datacubes @icelink-project.bsky.social #PISCO #DTC_icesheets
We have provided new Greenland Ice Sheet mass loss estimates to @polarportal.bsky.social. These are derived from the #GRACE and #GRACE-FO missions, and show that since the launch of GRACE in 2002, the ice sheet has lost approximately 5200 gigatonnes of ice!
We have provided new Greenland Ice Sheet mass loss estimates to @polarportal.bsky.social. These are derived from the #GRACE and #GRACE-FO missions, and show that since the launch of GRACE in 2002, the ice sheet has lost approximately 5200 gigatonnes of ice!
Heading to #EGU26 and use #radar to study terrestrial and planetary surfaces (both icy and rocky 🤯)? Have we got the session for you!
Consider submitting an abstract to #EGU26 CR6.3 by January 15 2026.
Read more about the session here www.egu26.eu/session/56853
Hope to see you there!
It may be difficult for the untrained eye to see - but we were of course dressed in the colors of glaciers at last weeks Christmas party at DTU Space🧊❄️🎄
Rasmus and @tabea-rettelbach.bsky.social are in Budapest this week at HungaroMet for the PISCO & @polarres.bsky.social hackathon! 🇭🇺
With 20 other students and instructors, they’re exploring projects that combine climate model outputs with in-situ and EO data to better understand our Polar regions.🌍❄️
