Journey to and Results from a 40-Year Sea Ice Record

Name: The ESSIC Seminar Series is on Winter Break!
Start: 2026-01-26
End: 2026-01-26

This event has passed. See the seminar recording here:

Dr. Claire Parkinson

NASA Goddard Space Flight Center

Monday November 18, 2019, 12 PM

ESSIC Conference Room 4102, 5825 University Research Ct, College Park, MD 20740

Abstract:

In the late 1970s, when Earth-observing satellites were still fairly new, a team was formed at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center to determine how to use the satellite data to monitor the polar sea ice covers in the Arctic and Antarctic. That effort has now led to a 40-year record that reveals considerable interannual variability in both polar regions but also notable long-term trends. Over these 40 years, 1979-2018, the Arctic experienced a prominent trend toward reduced sea ice coverage that fits solidly in a coherent (and qualitatively expected) broader pattern of Arctic climate changes. In contrast, the Antarctic experienced a much less readily explained sequence of sea ice changes, with Antarctic sea ice extents increasing overall for the first 36 years of the 40-year record, then rapidly decreasing. Globally, the trend in sea ice extents has been downward, even before the Antarctic turnaround, as the decreases in the Arctic sea ice extents far outweighed the sea ice increases in the Antarctic.

Bio-sketch:

Claire Parkinson is a climate scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, where she has worked since July 1978. Her research is focused largely on sea ice and climate change and has involved computer modeling, Arctic and Antarctic fieldwork, and especially satellite data analysis. She has used satellite data to reveal the changes in Arctic and Antarctic sea ice since the late 1970s, including their long-term trends. In addition to her sea ice work, since 1993 she has also been Project Scientist for NASA’s Earth-observing Aqua satellite, which has been collecting data about the Earth’s atmosphere, oceans, ice, and land since its launch in 2002. Claire has written books on satellite Earth observations, climate change, and the history of science, and has co-written and co-edited books on sea ice, climate modeling, satellite data, and the careers of women at Goddard. She is an elected member of the National Academy of Engineering, the National Academy of Sciences, the American Philosophical Society, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Sigma Xi, and Phi Beta Kappa, and has a B.A. in mathematics from Wellesley College and a Ph.D. in geography/climatology from the Ohio State University.

Webinar info:

Event site: http://go.umd.edu/parkinson

Event number: 731 723 957
Event password: essic
——————————————————-
To join the online event
——————————————————-
1. Click here to join the online event.

2. Click “Join Now”.
——————————————————-
To join the audio conference only
——————————————————-
US Toll: +1-415-655-0002
Global call-in numbers:

https://umd.webex.com/umd/globalcallin.php?MTID=e64874fba427c0d7118c882ae3c5b8eea
Access code: 731 723 957
——————————————————-
For IT assistance
——————————————————-
Cazzy Medley: cazzy@umd.edu