Sebastian H. Mernild

Jacob Sebastian Haugaard Mernild (born 20 October 1972) is a Danish professor in climate change, glaciology and hydrology at the University of Southern Denmark, serving as its pro-vice-chancellor from 2020 to 2022. Mernild has been an Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) author for the United Nations since 2010. Initially a contributing author on the IPCC Fifth Assessment Report, he was lead author on the IPCC Sixth Assessment Report.

Mernild is one of the world's leading climate scientists in the fields of glaciology and hydrology, specializing in the impacts of climate change in the Arctic and on the cryosphere, especially the ice sheets (glacier mass balance) and water levels. He has contributed to a number of international scientific reports, including the annual Arctic Report Card from National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and the Melting Snow and Ice: A Call for Action report, which Vice President Al Gore presented at the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen in 2015.

Mernild has worked as a senior research scientist at the Los Alamos National Laboratory and the International Arctic Research Center at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, United States, and as research director of the Climate Change and Glaciology Laboratory at the Center for Scientific Studies in Valdivia, Chile. He has on several occasions been a visiting professor at Colorado State University, University of Colorado Boulder, New York University, Hokkaido University, and Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology.

In 2016, he became the managing director of the 'Nansen Center' (part of Bjerknes Centre for Climate Research) in Bergen, Norway, a renowned climate research centre in Europe. He was elected pro-vice-chancellor of the University of Southern Denmark in 2020, and served until 2022. Mernild graduated from in 1993. He was admitted to the 'Teknikum' (College of Engineering), where he was to study engineering. Mernild soon dropped out, however, and instead became a captain in the Royal Danish Army, serving in Kosovo and the Afghan War. and thereby obtained a Doctor of Science degree from the Faculty of Science (University of Copenhagen).

Career In between his PhD degree and D.Sc. degree, he worked at the International Arctic Research Center of the University of Alaska Fairbanks, until 2009. He then worked as a scientific researcher at the COSIM (Climate, Ocean and Sea Ice Modeling) Project of the , within the United States Department of Energy and the Department of Computational Physics and Methods at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, US until 2013, followed by three years as the research director of the Climate Change and Glaciology Laboratory at the Center for Scientific Studies in Valdivia, Chile until 2016.

In 2016, he became a full professor at the Faculty of Engineering and Science at the Western Norway University of Applied Sciences in Sogndal, but shortly afterwards he was appointed managing director of the Nansen Environmental and Remote Sensing Center (NERSC) in Bergen. He is also the director (Program Chair) of the newly established Climate Centre of the University of Southern Denmark. Mernild is also partly a professor of climate change and glaciology at the Geophysical Institute of the University of Bergen in Norway.

Scientific research Mernild's scientific research focuses on local, regional and global climate modelling, using various atmospheric and terrestrial models and observations, with a particular focus on understanding and simulating climate change interactions related to snow, glacier ice mass-balance (for the Greenland Ice Sheet, Antarctic Ice Sheet, and mountain glaciers), and freshwater run-off (the water balance components) in the Arctic, Antarctic, Patagonia, and the Andes. Mernild's studies of Greenlandic glaciers have received particular attention because they combine different disciplines and detailed observations and modelling tools, enabling Mernild to use the glaciers to understand similar patterns elsewhere in the Arctic and around the world. Mernild did so by examining factors ranging from snow composition, glacier area and volume changes to meltwater runoff from Greenland.

Personal life Mernild is married to educational psychologist Birgitte Therkildsen, and together they have two children.

Selected works and publications

IPCC duties Mernild has been an IPCC author for the United Nations since 2010. Initially a contributing author on the IPCC Fifth Assessment Report, he was most recently lead author on the IPCC Sixth Assessment Report.

International reports Lead Participant: Lead author: Contributing author: Author: Author: Lead author:

Journals