Sophie Nowicki

Sophie Nowicki is an expert on global climate change, ice sheet modeling and sea level rise.

Her research focuses on the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets, their connections to the Earth’s climate system and their impact on sea level. Her work has been instrumental in global efforts to forecast future sea level rise.

In 2021, Nowicki served as a lead author for a chapter on ocean, cryosphere and sea level change in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Sixth Assessment Report, the international community’s definitive report on the status of climate change.

Prior to that, she co-led the Ice Sheet Model Intercomparison Project for phase 6 of the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (ISMIP6). This collaborative effort brought together more than 60 ice, ocean and atmosphere scientists to generate new estimates — released in 2020 — of the impact that Earth’s melting ice sheets could have on global sea levels by 2100. The results helped to inform the IPCC report.

Before joining UB, Nowicki was a research scientist and deputy chief for the Cryospheric Sciences Laboratory (Code 615) at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center. She has worked extensively on a variety of NASA projects devoted to understanding ice sheets and sea level rise, including as a member of NASA’s Sea Level Change Team.

Internationally, she has contributed to many other initiatives in these fields, serving, for example, as an executive committee member for the Ice Sheet Mass Balance Intercomparison Exercise phase 2.

Nowicki can respond to interview requests in English and French.

Sophie Nowicki, PhD
SUNY Empire Innovation Professor of Geology
University at Buffalo College of Arts and Sciences
UB RENEW Institute

• 716-645-4335
• sophien@buffalo.edu
• Sophie Nowicki’s website