Renowned climate scientist Konrad Steffen dies after falling through ice in Greenland – USA TODAY

Liked U.S.-Swiss local climate scientist and glaciologist Konrad “Koni” Steffen died Saturday while doing learn in Greenland. He used to be 68. 

Steffen fell true into a deep crevasse pudgy of water, Swiss media stories deliver, after snow and ice gave come beneath him while he labored come a climate role. Rescue attempts had been unsuccessful, and his body used to be no longer found.

Jason Box, an ice climatologist on the Geological Watch of Denmark and Greenland who used to be with Steffen sooner than he died, mentioned he believed his buddy “remains 8 meters down within the water,” in line with CBS News.

“For my allotment, Koni used to be like a father,” Box told CBS. “Huge man. Huge loss. Tears falling around the arena.”

Steffen used to be the scientific director on the Swiss Polar Institute and director of the Swiss Federal Institute for Woodland, Snow and Panorama Examine (WSL).

“In Konrad Steffen, we recognize no longer most productive lost the director of our institute, but moreover a dedicated scientist and above all a constructive and beneficiant particular person and buddy,” WSL mentioned in a commentary announcing Steffen’s dying. “We can all cross over him.”

With nearly 15,000 academic citations to his title, Steffen had been conducting learn about local climate substitute for over 40 years — critically within the Arctic and Antarctic, in line with the Swiss Federal Institutes of Technology board.

He moreover taught for years as a professor on the University of Boulder, Colorado and Federal Institutes of Technology in Zurich and in Lausanne.

Of us mourning the loss had been sharing their recollections of Steffen on social media.

“Koni’s notorious work as a glaciologist has been instrumental within the arena’s deepened working out of the local climate disaster,” wrote conventional U.S. Vice President and environmentalist Al Gore.

“He has had a definite affect on our campus and infinite students, I’m thankful we had him right here!” wrote SarahDawn Haynes, a Prospects Cartographer who works on the University of Colorado’s Environmental Heart. “#konradSteffen leisure in honor.”