Dorthe Dahl-Jensen

Dorthe Dahl-Jensen
Born (1958-09-08) 8 September 1958 (age 66)
Copenhagen, Denmark
Alma mater
Awards
Scientific career
Fields
  • Ice and Climate
Institutions

Dorthe Dahl-Jensen (born 8 September 1958, Copenhagen, Denmark)[1] is a Danish palaeoclimatology professor and researcher at the Centre for Ice and Climate at the Niels Bohr Institute, University of Copenhagen in Denmark. Her primary field is the study of ice and climate, specifically the reconstruction of climate records from ice cores and borehole data; ice flow models to date ice cores; continuum mechanical properties of anisotropic ice; ice in the solar system; and the history and evolution of the Greenland Ice Sheet.[2]

Education and career

Dahl-Jensen has an M.Sc. In Geophysics (1984) and a Ph.D. in Geophysics (1988) from the University of Copenhagen.[1]

As a student in 1980, Dahl-Jensen took part in ice-core drilling at the Dye 3 site on the Greenland ice sheet, a project led by Willi Dansgaard.[3] Although Dansgaard had a rule that no women were allowed at the drilling site, he allowed Dahl-Jensen to participate.[4][5] She and her drilling partner Jørgen Peder Steffensen later married.[6]

She was hired by Copenhagen's Niels Bohr Institute as an associate professor in 1997;[1] in 2007, she became head of its Centre for Ice and Climate.[5]

Research

Dahl-Jensen led the North Greenland Eemian Ice Drilling (NEEM) project: a 14-nation research team which spent four years drilling and analysing a 2,540 m (8,330 ft) ice core reaching back to the last interglacial period 130–113 thousand years BP, the results of which were published in the journal Nature in 2013.[7] The paper suggests, based on ice sheet simulations, that during the last interglacial Greenland might have contributed around 2 m (6 ft 7 in) to the observed 4–8 m (13–26 ft) sea level rise. This implies that Antarctic ice melting was a significant factor.

In 2015, a collaborative group of researchers from the U.S., Germany, and Denmark will study Renland, Greenland area for deep ice core drilling. [needs update]

Another project in early stages is a deep ice core drilling project, also located in Greenland which is expected to shed light on the northeast Greenland ice stream and its contributions to a rise in sea level. This could give details on what to expect for future sea level rise due to ice sheet mass loss in Greenland. According to The Guardian in 2021[8]:

Large-scale melting of the Greenland ice sheet would have long-term global consequences, beyond rising sea levels. It could halt the Gulf Stream ocean current, with potential knock-on effects on the Amazon rainforest and tropical monsoons.

Awards

References

  1. ^ a b c d Dahl-Jensen, Dorthe (2007-09-10). "Dorthe Dahl-Jensen". University of Copenhagen.
  2. ^ "Niels Bohr Institute". University of Copenhagen. 2007-09-10.
  3. ^ Dansgaard, W. (2004). Frozen Annals: Greenland Ice Cap Research (PDF). Odder, Denmark: Narayana Pres. p. 90. ISBN 87-990078-0-0. 1980 was the year we found two youngsters (and they each other), who should later become prominent participants in our glaciological research: Dorthe Dahl-Jensen and Jørgen Peder Steffensen, both developing very well in teaching and research, she strongest in theory, he in practice and experiment.
  4. ^ Gertner, Jon (2020). The Ice at the End of the World: An Epic Journey Into Greenland's Buried Past and Our Perilous Future. US: Random House Publishing Group. p. 211. ISBN 9780812986549. Dansgaard had an arbitrary rule that reflected the hidebound traditions of his field: no women could come to the drilling camp. But he had relented in this [Dahl-Jensen's] case.
  5. ^ a b "Drilling at Dye 3". Niels Bohr Institute. 12 September 2014. Retrieved 9 July 2021. In 2007, she was appointed as head of Willi Dansgaard's old department – which is now called the 'Centre for Ice and Climate' and under her leadership it remains one of the world's leading research institutes in the climate field – moreover with a gender distribution that is almost 50/50.
  6. ^ Kolbert, Elizabeth (December 30, 2001). "Ice Memory". The New Yorker. Retrieved July 7, 2021. Steffensen...pointed out that, if you believed the climate to be inherently unstable, the last thing you'd want to do is conduct a vast unsupervised experiment on it
  7. ^ NEEM community members (24 January 2013). "Eemian interglacial reconstructed from a Greenland folded ice core" (PDF). Nature. 493 (7433): 489–494. Bibcode:2013Natur.493..489N. doi:10.1038/nature11789. PMID 23344358. S2CID 4420908.
  8. ^ Carrington, Damian (May 17, 2021). "Greenland ice sheet on brink of major tipping point, says study". The Guardian. Retrieved July 6, 2021.
  9. ^ "Dorthe Dahl-Jensen - Louis Agassiz Medal -". European Geosciences Union (EGU). Retrieved 2015-10-24.
  10. ^ member profile Archived 2015-12-22 at the Wayback Machine; retrieved 2015-12-17
  11. ^ "Dorthe Dahl-Jensen". Member. Academia Europaea. Retrieved 2024-09-08.
  12. ^ BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award 2023