Snow in Bergen and a Seminar

The pace of my life has slowed down dramatically. That was expected after the packed initial nine days after my arrival in Norway. I successfully navigated washing my first load of laundry, getting unpacked and settled into my apartment, developing a plan in buying groceries and other goods, such as cleaning supplies, and cooking – well, sort of. There was also the Winter Olympics that kept me distracted the past two weeks.

I have been making a concerted effort to absorb many of the things that I am seeing and doing during these early weeks in Bergen. I have been in Bergen for 2-1/2 weeks (18 days). The sunset was at 5:04 PM when I arrived and it is now 5:54 PM. The length of the day has gone from 8-1/2 hours to 10 hours during that time. Bergen has a maritime climate with the North Sea nearby. The winter temperatures are warmer than you’d expect for 60°N due to the proximity of Bergen to the warm waters for the Gulf Stream ocean current. The result is that snow is intermittent during the winter months in Bergen and frequently melts quickly. The combination of me absorbing the rapidly changing environment in Bergen, and a brief snow event from last week, stood out to me as something worth enjoying and appreciating. There will likely not be many days like those during my three months in Bergen. Unfortunately, the snow we received in Bergen was no more than a couple inches and does not compare to the nor’easter that periled the Northeast, especially Providence (~30” to 36″). Ugh…, jealous. I have included a few photos to capture Bergen in snow.

The next round of weather was more typical Bergen, which is considered one of the rainiest cities in Europe. We had some light rain and that rain helped to melt the snow that had collected a few days earlier. The combination of which also produced some additional nice photos of Bergen.

I gave a presentation on Monday for the for the Bjerknes Center on Climate Research (BCCR) weekly seminar. BCCR is a joint center between the University of Bergen, NORCE, the Nansen Center, and the Institute of Marine Research. I went into the seminar viewing it as an opportunity to introduce myself to a wider audience and having the potential to meet more people that I might be able to work with during my visit. To achieve such an introduction, I tried to keep the presentation lighter on the science and more in-depth on my background and the projects that I have worked on in recent years. I even included a slide of weather observations that I made when I was 8 years old as an emphasis that the work that I’m doing has been a part of me for all of my life. I was concerned going into the presentation because this week is winter break for the local schools and a number of people are off this week on holiday with their families. There were 19 people (a reasonable number) that attended the presentation and there were three people talk to me immediately after I finished. Overall, I was very happy with how the seminar went as an introduction. I have also been invited to a weekly meeting on atmospheric dynamics with faculty and students at the University of Bergen. It is these opportunities to connect with people that are also a big component of the Fulbright experience in addition to the research that I am completing.

For those of you have who have been following along through this blog, or have read through all of these posts collectively, I thought I’d share that it is possible to have the posts emailed directly to you. To have the updates emailed to you, please fill out the form in the following link. You are welcome to unsubscribe at any point. https://megamemoirs.com/thenorsk_email/