Willem van der Bilt
banner
willemvdbilt.bsky.social
Willem van der Bilt
@willemvdbilt.bsky.social
Polar paleoclimatologist, Principal Investigator
I'm excited to see this out and happy to be part of it, showcasing our contribution to this science frontier @bjerknes.uib.no.
🥳 It's out!
The latest PAGES Mag on "New Analytical Techniques in #Paleoscience" is online!
🌍 This issue highlights how novel imaging methods and machine-learning approaches are revolutionizing paleoscientific research and expanding our ability to decode past Earth’s history.
🔗 shorturl.at/LOJj5
November 1, 2025 at 6:52 AM
Reposted by Willem van der Bilt
🥳 It's out!
The latest PAGES Mag on "New Analytical Techniques in #Paleoscience" is online!
🌍 This issue highlights how novel imaging methods and machine-learning approaches are revolutionizing paleoscientific research and expanding our ability to decode past Earth’s history.
🔗 shorturl.at/LOJj5
October 29, 2025 at 1:28 PM
This year's field kit 👇🏼was particularly minimalist😬, allowing us to sample as many #Greenland lakes as possible, to find the traces of tsunamis, triggered by rockfalls, in the wake of rapidly retreating #glaciers.
September 1, 2025 at 8:33 AM
Reposted by Willem van der Bilt
🧪 New research reveals that plants and algae survived in a Arctic lake on Svalbard, during the coldest phase of the last ice age, when the region was thought to be buried under ice.

How is that possible?

Read this paper led by @willemvdbilt.bsky.social

bjerknes.uib.no/en/news/arct...
Lake persisted where ice was expected in Arctic oasis
Researchers discovered that plants and algae survived in a small Arctic lake during the coldest period of the last ice age, when the area was assumed to…
bjerknes.uib.no
June 16, 2025 at 12:03 PM
Reposted by Willem van der Bilt
🏔️Heinrich Event 2 was preceded by atmospheric warming, supporting the view that Heinrich Stadials were marked by
extreme seasonality and not year-round cold.

👉Read more here: www.nature.com/articles/s43...

@willemvdbilt.bsky.social
@bjerknes.uib.no
High Arctic Lake sediments show that Heinrich Event 2 was preceded by summer warming - Communications Earth & Environment
Heinrich Event 2 was preceded by atmospheric warming, supporting the view that Heinrich Stadials were marked by extreme seasonality and not year-round cold, according to paleoclimate data from High Ar...
www.nature.com
June 16, 2025 at 12:02 PM
📢 Interested in µm-scale scanning of lake sediments? Then consider submitting an abstract to our session 👇🏼 at the @ialipa2025.bsky.social conference, hosted 6-10 October in Aix-les-Bains. You can do so until May 30 📅, using this link: lnkd.in/dDeyrHGx. @gfz.bsky.social @bjerknes.uib.no @unibe.ch
May 6, 2025 at 2:13 PM
Reposted by Willem van der Bilt
📢 Preparations for the 3rd Paleolimnology & Limnogeology International Symposium are in full swing! We invite submissions to our Glacier variability session VI-1 🧊

🌐 ialipa-2025.sciencesconf.org/resource/pag...

@virtual-ialipa2025.bsky.social @willemvdbilt.bsky.social
#lake #sediment #GLOF
April 2, 2025 at 6:16 PM
An impression of the field campaign that led to a recent paper in @commsearth.bsky.social about the potential role of increased snowfall in a warmer Arctic on regional glaciers:
youtu.be/l8CvcqjGM1Q @bjerknes.bsky.social
Did Åsgardfonna on Svalbard survive during a warmer past?
YouTube video by Bjerknes Centre for Climate Research
youtu.be
February 27, 2025 at 10:53 AM
Proud to see this one out, led by #PhD A. Auer at #UiB and the @bjerknes.bsky.social. Our findings show that #Svalbard glaciers survived warmer-than-present past conditions because snowfall increased. Could this slow current retreat? Check: www.nature.com/articles/s43247-025-02064-z
Hydroclimate intensification likely aided glacier survival on Svalbard in the Early Holocene - Communications Earth & Environment
The Åsgardfonna ice cap in Svalbard did not melt entirely during the Holocene Thermal Maximum and possibly advanced despite the warmer-than-today climate, due to seasonal sea-ice loss enhanced snowfal...
www.nature.com
February 18, 2025 at 2:01 PM
A call for abstracts to our @eurogeosciences.bsky.social #EGU2025 "Winds of change" session 👇. Do you work on polar coastal sediment archives to extract information about past changes in storminess? Then consider submission via lnkd.in/dq-xh8mu. Happy holidays 🙏
December 19, 2024 at 3:12 PM
@bjerknes.bsky.social wrote a really nice piece about our @natureportfolio.bsky.social research into the links between storminess and climate in the Arctic, and why we ought to care about the impacts this might have on the carbon cycle.

bjerknes.uib.no/en/article/w...
Wild is the wind - Arctic lake records 10 000 years of storminess and reveals a big surprise
Researcher Willem van der Bilt was surprised that the results of a project on storminess in a less icy Arctic showed the opposite of what was expected.
bjerknes.uib.no
November 11, 2024 at 3:12 PM
Very proud and pleased to see our 10 000 year perspective on the links between Arctic storminess and climate change published in @natureportfolio.bsky.social today 👇🤩:

www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Coastal lake sediments from Arctic Svalbard suggest colder summers are stormier - Nature Communications
Coastal lake sediments from Svalbard are analyzed to reconstruct Holocene changes in Easterly and Westerly wind strength. These results show winds were stronger during cold summers and challenge the v...
www.nature.com
November 11, 2024 at 3:10 PM
Short impression of this summer's 1700 km long sailing trip to study the ancient raised beaches on Svalbard (Svenskøya island) and learn more about the links between ice sheet evolution and sea-level change in the past.
October 10, 2024 at 2:53 PM
This isn't Mars, but Svenskøya, a small island in the eastern Barents Sea. Dating bone and wood from old beaches will hopefully deepen our understanding of links between ice sheet and sea level changes @bjerknes.bsky.social
September 10, 2024 at 11:40 AM
During our 1st attempt to core this Svalbard lake, we found it ice-covered. We had more luck later. The sediments contained dense layers. Microscopy shows these contain minerals that form when oxygen is scarce. In the Arctic, such conditions are often caused by what hindered coring  - ice coverage.
March 1, 2024 at 12:24 PM
Torn sediments, slumped at a 90-degree angle, and a turbidite on top: diagnostic features of an an earthquake deposit. This one happened 9500 yrs ago on Arctic Svalbard as rapid glacier melt re-activated faults: will this happen again in the future? @bjerknes.bsky.social
February 16, 2024 at 11:56 AM
These Svalbard sediments cover the past 100 yrs. Molecular imaging allows 100s of temperature biomarker measurements on this slice of mud, and compare these against weather data. This new approach places recent Arctic summer warming in a 14000 yr context @bjerknes.bsky.social
January 30, 2024 at 1:48 PM
Reposted by Willem van der Bilt
Looking for a 3-year PostDoc to join our team at University of Bergen in the #ISLAS_project and #ISOSCAN to work at the interface between meteorology and hydrology. Use stable isotope models and data to study how Scandinavian mountains extract water from weather systems: tinyurl.com/imetb
January 30, 2024 at 10:31 AM