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Michaela Muehl, MSc

University of Bern (Switzerland) and Oeschger Centre for Climate Change Research

Michaela, in red polar jacket and green woollen hat, holds a short ice core in a rubber-gloved hand. She is in the ice core facility (the cold room) at the University of Bern.

Michaela, in red polar jacket and green woollen hat, holds a short ice core in a rubber-gloved hand. She is in the ice core facility (the cold room) at the University of Bern.

What’s the work that you do?

I am a third-year PhD candidate; I work in the “Past Climate and Biogeochemical Studies on Ice Cores” group. I analyze entrapped Greenhouse gases (my main focus is on methane) in ice cores from both Greenland and Antarctica to reconstruct the climate of the past. I am also part of the BeyondEPICA project; I will participate in the coming Antarctic field season (Nov 2023- March 2024) at Little Dome C to continue drilling the oldest ice.

What keeps you going?

There is not a single day that I don’t enjoy going to work. I like the “spirit” of research, this inquisitiveness, to learn something new every day. But most importantly, I appreciate the value of our work. The basic research is fundamental to better understand the “System Earth” with all its parts and interactions. Only with a comprehensive understanding of past climate changes and natural variability can we make reliable predictions for the future and how the Earth system will respond to human-induced climate change.

What’s your message to the world?

Look deep into nature and you will understand everything better.

Organisation: University of Bern (Switzerland) and Oeschger Centre for Climate Change Research

Nationality: Germany Germany

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We are grateful to The Ocean Foundation for acting as our fiscal sponsor in the US, the Curtis and Edith Munson Foundation for sponsoring this project, and the Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research (SCAR) for supporting us.