Keynote lectures by leading polar researchers
The opening day brings together international researchers who have shaped the understanding of Greenland's ice, oceans, and ecosystems. Three lectures are delivered online.
A tale of ice, warm water and the future (Keynote 01)
Fiamma Straneo — Harvard University, Cambridge, USA
In the early 2000s, glaciers in Greenland began speeding up, melting, and raising sea level — turning attention to the ocean. Using robots, icebreakers, helicopters, and seals, this lecture traces the detective-like work of understanding how a warming ocean impacts an ice sheet, and what it means to return to one place year after year, in collaboration with local communities and early-career scientists.
East Greenland marine coastal systems (Keynote 02)
Søren Rysgaard — Director of CIFAR, University of Aarhus, Denmark
Rapid loss of sea ice and increasing freshwater input are transforming the Arctic Ocean, with ice-free summers expected within a decade. The CIFAR Center of Excellence investigates the interactions between ice loss, ocean freshening, and ecosystem functioning, addressing how coastal runoff, nutrient cycling, and food web dynamics will respond — knowledge essential for supporting sustainable adaptation in Arctic coastal communities.
Research at and around the Mittivakkat Glacier in SE Greenland (Keynote 3 – online)
Sebastian Mernild — University of Southern Denmark & University of Bergen
Research at Mittivakkat Glacier provides a unique long-term record of how a small Arctic glacier responds to climate change. Studies document significant ice thinning and volume loss driven by rising air temperatures and shifting precipitation. Observations and modeling reveal declining flow velocities and strong seasonal variations tied to meltwater processes, underscoring the sensitivity of peripheral Greenland glaciers and their contribution to sea-level rise.
Geomorphology and biogeochemistry at the Sermilik Station in a changing climate (Keynote 4)
Jacob Yde et al. — Western Norway University of Applied Sciences, Sogndal, Norway
The landscape near Sermilik Station is distinctive in that many of the landsystems present across periglacial Southeast Greenland are concentrated within a relatively small area. This presentation describes dominant landforms and geomorphological processes across coast, hillslopes, proglacial valley, glaciolacustrine environment, and glacial landsystem — and highlights recent progress in understanding biogeochemical and isotopic processes in a changing climate.
Exploring Scientific and Outreach Connections through Glaciological Research at Helheim Glacier (Keynote 06 – online)
Leigh Stearns — University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, USA
Helheim Glacier is one of Greenland's fastest-flowing outlet glaciers, and one that has baffled glaciologists for several decades. Unlike many of other outlet glacier in Greenland, it exhibits interannual variability that ris often perplexing and difficult to predict. Building on Dr. Straneo's introductory keynote, I will describe two decades of research at Helheim and Sermilik Fjord and make the case for why interdisciplinary approaches are essential to understanding complex, coupled glacier-fjord systems. I will also present our network of timelapse cameras deployed around Sermilik Fjord as a platform for long-term monitoring, and outline ideas for expanding education and outreach efforts in the region.
Snow4Flow: A NASA airborne mission for the state and fate of Arctic glaciers (Keynote 07 – online)
Lauren Andrews — NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD, USA
Snow4Flow is a NASA Earth Venture Suborbital mission that will capture spatial variability in snow accumulation and ice volume across four Arctic and near-Arctic regions — Alaska and western Canada, southeastern Greenland, the Canadian High Arctic, and Svalbard — to deliver more reliable projections of land-ice change. Multi-frequency airborne radar-sounding surveys will be conducted in March–May 2027–2029, with all software, datasets, and model outputs openly distributed.