Sophie Nowicki

My research interests focus on the studies of ice sheet dynamics, and their connections to the global climate and future sea level. Through applied mathematics, remote sensing observations and numerical modeling, my work spans the spectrum of local processes, such as understanding the physics of ice sheet grounding lines, or the impact of our poor knowledge of bedrock topography on ice dynamics, to that of large-scale continental ice sheet models and their use in projections of sea level change. I co-lead the SeaRISE effort (Sea-level Response to Ice Sheet Evolution) and its follow on efforts ISMIP6 and ISMIP7 (Ice Sheet Model Intercomparison Project for CMIP6/CMIP7), which seek to estimate the upper bound of sea-level contribution from the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets in the next 200 yrs and the associated uncertainties in projections from continental ice sheet models for the International Panel on Climate Change 5th, 6th and 7th Assessment Reports (IPCC AR5, AR6 and AR7). I am currently an executive committee member for the Ice Sheet Mass Balance Intercomparison Exercise, phase 3 (IMBIE3), and a member of the Scientific Steering Committee (SSC) for the Community Earth System Model (CESM). I am the Division Head for Ice Sheets for the International Association of Cryospheric Sciences (IACS), a co-lead for the Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research Instabilities and Threshold in Antarctica (SCAR INSTANT - Theme 3) and the NASA Sea Level Change Team. I serve on the Advisory Board for the EU-funded PROTECT and OCEAN:ICE projects and the NSF Institute for Harnessing Data and Model Revolution in the Polar Region (iHARP). I was invited and accepted the invitation to be a lead author on the IPCC AR6 Chapter 9 “Ocean, cryosphere, and sea level change”.