University of Bremen
Institute of Environmental Physics
Otto-Hahn-Allee 1, 28359 Bremen, Germany
Building NW1, office N3330, phone +49-421-218-62158
email: gunnar.spreen(at)uni-bremen.de
Gunnar Spreen received his Diplom in physics (comparable M.Sc.) and Ph.D. in oceanography from the University of Hamburg, Germany, in 2004 and 2008, respectively. Thereafter, until July 2012, he worked as a Caltech Postdoctoral Scholar in the Climate, Ocean, and Solid Earth Science Section at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, USA. From August 2012 Gunnar Spreen was employed as staff research scientist for sea ice remote sensing at the Norwegian Polar Institute, Tromsø, Norway. Since August 2015 he is the head of the research group "Remote Sensing of Polar Regions" at the University of Bremen, Institute of Environmental Physics.
His main research interests are satellite remote sensing of Polar Regions with focus on monitoring changes of sea ice (extent, mass, and dynamics) and on understanding underlying climate processes. Recent research focuses on the MOSAiC drift expedition (https://mosaic-expedition.org), which he joined for about half a year in 2019/2020 and serves as member on the project board. Conceptually, further work is based on analysis of sea ice drift in comparison to atmospheric reanalyses, estimating the sea ice export out of the Arctic Basin, freeboard data from altimetry, and improving sea ice concentration. Of central interest is the development of new methods to derive sea ice parameters like snow depth, lead fraction and thin ice thickness using passive and active microwave remote sensing. Satellite measurements are evaluated using ground-based and airborne field observation.
The following projects are currently worked on in the research group for Remote Sensing of Polar Regions.
(Underlined mark supervised PhD, MSc, and postdoc's first-author publications)