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  • WHERE I WORK

My glacier is melting — and I’m charting its decline

Glaciologist Andrea Fischer describes her first-hand experience of studying these ever-changing ice masses.
By
  1. Nikki Forrester

    1. Nikki Forrester is a science journalist based in Davis, West Virginia.

Glaciologist Andrea Fischer explores a natural glacier cavity of the Jamtalferner glacier, Austria.

Andrea Fischer is the vice-director of the Institute of Interdisciplinary Mountain Research at the Austrian Academy of Sciences in Vienna, Austria. Credit: Lisi Niesner/Reuters

I grew up in Salzburg, Austria, and was always very fond of mountaineering. During my PhD, I used satellite data to measure the ice flow of large and remote glaciers in Iceland and polar regions that couldn’t be accessed in the field. This helped me study how quickly glacial ice flows. The subject fascinated me, and I decided to pursue a career in which I could travel to and study the glaciers in person instead of spending my days in front of a computer screen.

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Nature 619, 664 (2023)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-023-02308-y

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