Sophie Nowicki

Sophie Marie Jeanne Nowicki, is Empire Innovation Professor in the Department of Geology of the University at Buffalo. She does research on the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets, focusing on their connections to global climate and sea level. Before that, she was physical scientist at the Nasa Goddard Space Flight Centre, investigating ice sheet changes.

In 2022, an ice-covered foreland in West Antarctica was named Nowicki-foreland in recognition of Nowicki's role in increasing understanding of sea level rise.

Background and Education Sophie Nowciki was born in northern France to a French mother and American father, both of whom were environmental scientists. Despite originally wanting to be an artist or architect, her parents encouraged her to pursue science. She was Principal Investigator on a National Science Foundation project investigating Ocean-Ice Interaction in the Amundsen Sea, which concluded in 2011.

Nowicki was Deputy Chief for the Cryospheric Sciences Laboratory and co-leader of the steering committee for the Ice Sheet Model Intercomparison Project for CMIP6. She was the official responsible for the Cryosphere Model Comparison Tool. During her time at NASA she worked in Operation IceBridge, and co-led the international SeaRISE (Sea-Level Response to Ice Sheet Evolution) project looking at the sensitivity of ice sheets to external environmental forcings. She was a member of the Community Earth System Model (CESM) Scientific Steering Committee (SSC) and an executive committee member for the Ice Sheet Mass Balance Intercomparison Exercise phase 2 (IMBIE2).

In August 2020, Nowicki became Empire Innovation Professor at the Department of Geology of the University at Buffalo, USA. She does research on the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets, focusing on their connections to global climate and sea level. Her work takes in local processes in ice sheets as well as continental models, and the impact of ice sheet changes on sea levels. She is also interested in improving polar climate models. She has spoken to news groups including Yahoo News and Florida Weekly and recorded a NASA Google+ Hangout on sea level rise.

She credits climate scientist Gavin Schmidt as her unofficial mentor.

In 2022, an ice-covered foreland in West Antarctica was named Nowicki-foreland in recognition of Nowicki's role in increasing understanding of sea level rise. The UK Antarctic Place-names Committee approved the term “Nowicki Foreland” to refer to a “high, ice-covered foreland 9 kilometers wide and 30 kilometers long, forming the eastern arm of the Martin Peninsula on the coast of Marie Byrd Land.”