Melting ice—a personal view of climate change

Abstract

I first crossed the Arctic Circle on my way north in the early 1970s. I visited the glaciers in Swedish Lappland and Norway’s rugged Lofoten islands. Apart from the natural beauty of the area, my main interests were climate and geological history, as I was then working towards a doctoral degree in glacial and marine geology, which I earned in the late 1970s. Since then I have been in the Far North nearly every year. In the beginning I travelled in the Scandinavian mainland; later I saw Iceland, Svalbard and Greenland. Special highlights were the Northwest and Northeast Passages.