She was Chair of the Danish Commission on Climate Change Policy which developed the plan for removing fossil fuels from the Danish energy and transport sectors upon which the current national energy strategy is based. She is a member of the Danish Council on Climate Change as well as the United Nations Scientific Panel to draft the 2019 Global Sustainable Development Report.

Her research is carried out in the Center for Macroecology, Evolution and Climate and focuses on biogeochemical processes in the surface ocean and how these are influenced by climate change. Specifically, her work deals with how changes in climate and biodiversity in the ocean interact to influence the global carbon cycle. She is also a Principle Investigator in the development of the Planetary Boundariesframework aiming to identify a safe operating spacefor humanity in relation to its perturbation of the global environment.