Claire Parkinson NASA Goddard Space Flight Center Winner of the 2015 Nordberg Award

 
"Climate Change As Revealed in Satellite Sea Ice Observations"
  
Satellite technology has converted sea ice from being among the worst observed to among the best observed of all climate variables, providing a detailed daily record of sea ice distributions in both polar regions. Despite considerable interannual variability, both the Arctic and the Antarctic sea ice covers show trends since the late 1970s that rise well above the background noise. In the Arctic those trends are downward, firmly in line with the expectations for a warming climate, but in the Antarctic the overall trends are upward, quite counter to most expectations. The Arctic ice losses far exceed the Antarctic ice gains, yielding a deceasing global sea ice cover. The result is a sea ice situation similar to the situation with climate change more broadly, namely, observed changes that match expectations on the large-scale but have unexpected features that keep scientists on their toes seeking explanations for what was unexpected, longer and more complete data records, and improved model formulations.

Biographical Information

Claire Parkinson has been a scientist at NASA Goddard since July 1978, with a research emphasis on polar sea ice and climate change. Although her research has mostly involved satellite remote sensing, she has also developed a computer model of sea ice and has done field work in both the Arctic and the Antarctic. Since May 1993, she has additionally been Project Scientist for the Earth-observing Aqua satellite, which launched in 2002. She has written books on satellite observations of the Earth, climate change, and the history of science, and has co-written a book on climate modeling and several books on satellite data and results from those data about our changing planet. Claire has a B.A. from Wellesley College, where she was elected to Phi Beta Kappa and Sigma Xi, and a Ph.D. from Ohio State University. She is a Fellow of the American Meteorological Society and the American Association for the Advancement of Science, a member of the National Academy of Engineering and the American Philosophical Society, and Chair of the NASA Goddard Senior Fellows.

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