Jürgen Mienert, Professor

Past employee
+47 77 64 44 46
jurgen.mienert@uit.no
Gas Hydrate and Free Gas Reservoirs, Methane Emissions into the Atmosphere

Educational story

Jürgen received his master and doctoral degree at the Christian-Albrechts-Universität zu Kiel, Germany, in 1981 and 1985 respectively. He received a DAAD fellowship from 1981-1982, doing marine geophysical research at Lamont-Doherty Geological Observatory (L-DGO) of Columbia University, New York, USA.

After completing his PhD he joined the Department of Geology and Geophysics at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI), USA, as an institutional postdoctoral fellow. In 1988 he returned to Kiel and GEOMAR, and was leading Marine Geophysics at the SFB 313 at the Christian-Albrechts-Universität zu Kiel.

Research

Jürgen’s research focused on understanding processes that govern gas hydrates on continental margins, including geo hazards. Current emphasis is placed on understanding whether rising Arctic Ocean temperatures cause a destabilization of Arctic methane hydrate reservoirs which in turn cause methane release leading to geo hazards, ocean acidification and marine benthic responses at unknown rates and response times.

Leader

Jürgen led the European funded Ocean Margin Research (OMARC) Consortium with 15 different projects and more than 300 scientists, and the European Science Foundation EUROMARGINS project with an equal number of scientists. He has served as project leader on several EU and national projects, served as an EC expert group member for marine research infrastructures, been a working group member (Wissenschaftsrat) for University Excellence Initiatives in Germany, and stayed at Institut Français de Recherche pour l’Exploration de la Mer (IFREMER), Brest, France and Scripps Institution of Oceanography, La Jolla, USA.

Director

Jürgen was Head of the Department of Geology at UiT from 2009-2013, and has published more than 400 papers including books and abstracts. He has been now director of CAGE from 2013 to 2017.