Climate Change Senior Scientist and Goddard Senior Fellow, NASA GSFC

Since July 1978, Dr. Claire Parkinson has worked at NASA Goddard with a research emphasis on polar sea ice and its connections to the rest of the climate system and to climate change. Much of her work has involved the analysis of sea ice from satellite data, and she is the lead author of an atlas of Arctic sea ice from satellite data and a coauthor of two other sea ice atlases. She has also developed a numerical model of sea ice and has done fieldwork in both the Arctic and the Antarctic. Since April 1993, she also has been Project Scientist for the Aqua satellite mission, which launched in May 2002 and is transmitting data on many atmospheric, ocean, land, and ice variables. She has written or cowritten several books, including an introductory text on examining the Earth with satellite imagery, a book on climate modeling, and a book on the history of western science from 1202 to 1930. She speaks frequently to teacher and student groups regarding Earth sciences and satellite remote sensing, and she is a science advisor to the Earth/Sky radio program. She is a member of the U.S. National Academy of Engineering (NAE), a member of the American Philosophical Society, and a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), the American Meteorological Society (AMS), and Phi Beta Kappa.

Among her many awards: Dr. Parkinson received First Place in the Environment category of ForeWord Reviews’ Book of the Year Awards, for the book "Coming Climate Crisis? Consider the Past, Beware the Big Fix" (2011); was awarded the Remote Sensing Prize, American Meteorological Society (2011); was elected to the American Philosophical Society (2010) and the U.S. National Academy of Engineering (2009); received a NASA Exceptional Achievement Medal (2008); and was elected a Goddard Senior Fellow, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center (2005).