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Dirk van As
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Project: Merging Greenland automatic weather station networks for increased accuracy in ice sheet surface mass balance estimatesDirk van As is a senior scientist at the Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland (GEUS) in Copenhagen. He studies interactions (such as melting) between the ice and the atmosphere on the Greenland ice sheet. While at CIRES, he will work with Konrad Steffen’s group to investigate the Greenland ice sheet’s surface mass budget—the annual difference between the mass of snow and ice that accumulates and the mass that ablates via melting, evaporation, and wind erosion. The Greenland ice sheet is losing mass at an accelerating rate, contributing to global sea level rise—a phenomenon that could affect millions of people living on coastal areas around the world. Getting an accurate picture of the ice sheet’s stability and melt rates can help scientists and policy makers better predict future changes and take appropriate action. Toward this end, Van As will integrate data from the CIRES weather station network in the high regions of the ice sheet and the GEUS network in the lower regions—for a total of more than 30 weather stations—to produce a spatial distribution of temperature, humidity, solar radiation, and other parameters crucial for validating the regional climate models that calculate melt. “What’s great about my work is that I’m more or less free to follow my own interest in science. I love meeting lots of people and everything else about my research—except for the paperwork,” Van As jokes. While in Boulder, he plans to camp, ski, and road-trip, “though I suppose step one is to meet the right locals to show me the ropes,” he says. |
