Eric Rignot
Distinguished Professor and Chair, Earth System Science | UC Irvine
Irvine, CA, UNITED STATES
Dr. Rignot works to understand the interactions of glaciers and climate and what effects they will have on global sea levels.
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Biography
Dr. Rignot works to understand the interactions of ice and climate, in particular to determine how the ice sheets in Antarctica and Greenland will respond to climate change in the coming century and how they will affect global sea level.
He uses satellite remote sensing techniques (imaging radar, laser altimetry, radio echo sounding), airborne geophysical surveys (icebridge), field surveys (radar, GPS, bathymetry, CTD), and numerical modeling (ice sheet motion, ocean circulation near glaciers, coupled ocean/ice sheet models).
In addition, he is an expert in how ice sheets in Antarctica and Greenland will respond to climate change, interactions of ice and climate, global sea level, satellite remote sensing and ocean circulation.
Areas of Expertise (4)
Ice Sheet Dynamics and Mass Balance
Climate Change
Glaciology
Radar
Accomplishments (4)
2017 Louis Agassiz Medal
Awarded to Eric Rignot for fundamental innovations in the remote sensing of glacier flow, leading to the first assessments of the mass balance of the ice sheets of Antarctica and Greenland.
NASA Outstanding Leadership Medal
2012.
Thomson Reuters Highly Cited Researcher
2014.
2007 Nobel Peace Prize (Contributing Author)
Co-author IPCC AR4.
Education (5)
Université Pierre et Marie Curie (Paris VI): Master's Degree, Astronomy and Astrophysics 1987
Ecole Centrale Paris: Engineer's Degree, Aerospace Engineering 1985
University of Southern California: Ph.D., Aerospace, Aeronautical and Astronautical Engineering 1988
University of Southern California: Master's Degree, Electrical, Electronics and Communications Engineering 1988
University of Southern California: Ph.D. and E.E., Electrical Engineering and Aeronautical Engineering 1991
Affiliations (2)
- NASA
- JPL
Links (1)
Media Appearances (6)
Ph.D. Defense At Antarctica Marks Historic Milestone For Climate Research
The Pinnacle Gazette online
2025-03-17
Ratnakar Gadi has etched his name in history as the first to defend his Ph.D. dissertation at Antarctica's Princess Elisabeth station, the world’s only zero-emission polar research facility. … Gadi, enrolled at UC Irvine's Department of Earth System Science, defended his thesis concerning ice dynamics beneath two of the world’s significant glaciers … Eric Rignot, Distinguished Professor of Earth System Science and Gadi’s thesis advisor, emphasized the importance of Gadi's research. "It could not have been more fitting, because the work Dr. Gadi has been doing is helping us answer some of the most difficult questions we have about the impact of global climate change on sensitive polar regions," he stated.
Pyramid hidden for millennia discovered in Antarctica
Brighter Side of the News online
2025-02-27
According to Professor Eric Rignot of the University of California, [Irvine] an expert in Earth system science, the fuss may be much ado about nothing. “This is just a mountain that looks like a pyramid," Rignot stated, aiming to allay rumors. He further elaborated, “Pyramid shapes are not impossible — many peaks partially look like pyramids, but they only have one to two faces like that, rarely four."
Glaciers under close surveillance
The UNESCO Courier online
2025-01-06
"It’s mind-boggling to think that a little change in water pressure from the sea is lifting up a kilometre of ice, lifting up the whole glacier," says Eric Rignot, a professor of Earth System Science at the University of California, Irvine, and lead author of the Thwaites study. Rignot, who also works for the United States' space agency NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, called the zone where ice rests on the seafloor "the Achilles heel of the glaciers" in a warming world.
Why Greenland? Remote but resource-rich island occupies a key position in a warming world
Associated Press online
2025-01-07
Think of Greenland as an open refrigerator door or thermostat for a warming world …. Locked inside are valuable rare earth minerals needed for telecommunications, as well as uranium, billions of untapped barrels of oil and a vast supply of natural gas that used to be inaccessible but is becoming less so. … But more than the oil, gas or minerals, there’s ice — a “ridiculous” amount, said climate scientist Eric Rignot of the University of California, Irvine.
Doomsday Glacier may collapse sooner than we thought
Earth.com online
2024-09-22
When it comes to future forecasts, optimism is scarce. The scientists predict that Thwaites and the Antarctic Ice Sheet could completely collapse within the next 200 years. … “While progress has been made, we still have deep uncertainty about the future,” said Eric Rignot, a glaciologist at the University of California, Irvine and part of ITGC. “I remain very worried that this sector of Antarctica is already in a state of collapse.”
Scientists looked deep beneath the Doomsday Glacier. What they found spells potential disaster for the planet
CNN online
2024-09-20
Scientists using ice-breaking ships and underwater robots have found the Thwaites Glacier in Antarctica is melting at an accelerating rate and could be on an irreversible path to collapse, spelling catastrophe for global sea level rise. … “While progress has been made, we still have deep uncertainty about the future,” said Eric Rignot, a glaciologist at the University of California, Irvine and part of ITGC [International Thwaites Glacier Collaboration], “I remain very worried that this sector of Antarctica is already in a state of collapse.”
Articles (3)
Ice flow modelling to constrain the surface mass balance and ice discharge of San Rafael Glacier, Northern Patagonia Icefield
Journal of GlaciologyGabriella Collao-Barrios, Fabien Gillet-Chaulet, Vincent Favier, Gino Casassa Etienne Berthier, Ines Dussaillant, Jeremie Mouginot, Eric Rignot
2018 We simulate the ice dynamics of the San Rafael Glacier (SRG) in the Northern Patagonia Icefield (46.7°S, 73.5°W), using glacier geometry obtained by airborne gravity measurements. The full-Stokes ice flow model (Elmer/Ice) is initialized using an inverse method to infer the basal friction coefficient from a satellite-derived surface velocity mosaic. The high surface velocities (7.6 km a ⁻¹ ) near the glacier front are explained by low basal shear stresses (1 km a ⁻¹ ). We force the model using different surface mass-balance scenarios taken or adapted from previous studies and geodetic elevation changes between 2000 and 2012. Our results suggest that previous estimates of average surface mass balance over the entire glacier ( Ḃ ) were likely too high, mainly due to an overestimation in the accumulation area. We propose that most of SRG imbalance is due to the large ice discharge (−0.83 ± 0.08 Gt a ⁻¹ ) and a slightly positive Ḃ (0.08 ± 0.06 Gt a ⁻¹ ). The committed mass-loss estimate over the next century is −0.34 ± 0.03 Gt a ⁻¹ . This study demonstrates that surface mass-balance estimates and glacier wastage projections can be improved using a physically based ice flow model.
Mass balance of the Antarctic Ice Sheet from 1992 to 2017
NatureAndrew Shepherd, Erik R. Ivins, Eric Rignot, Bert Wouters et al.
2018 The Antarctic Ice Sheet is an important indicator of climate change and driver of sea-level rise. Here we combine satellite observations of its changing volume, flow and gravitational attraction with modelling of its surface mass balance to show that it lost 2,720 ± 1,390 billion tonnes of ice between 1992 and 2017, which corresponds to an increase in mean sea level of 7.6 ± 3.9 millimetres (errors are one standard deviation). Over this period, ocean-driven melting has caused rates of ice loss from West Antarctica to increase from 53 ± 29 billion to 159 ± 26 billion tonnes per year; ice-shelf collapse has increased the rate of ice loss from the Antarctic Peninsula from 7 ± 13 billion to 33 ± 16 billion tonnes per year. We find large variations in and among model estimates of surface mass balance and glacial isostatic adjustment for East Antarctica, with its average rate of mass gain over the period 1992–2017 (5 ± 46 billion tonnes per year) being the least certain.
Intercomparison and Validation of SAR-Based Ice Velocity Measurement Techniques within the Greenland Ice Sheet CCI Project
Remote SensingJohn Peter Merryman Boncori, Morten Langer Andersen, Jørgen Dall, Anders Kusk, Eric Rignot et al.
2018 Ice velocity is one of the products associated with the Ice Sheets Essential Climate Variable. This paper describes the intercomparison and validation of ice-velocity measurements carried out by several international research groups within the European Space Agency Greenland Ice Sheet Climate Change Initiative project, based on space-borne Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) data. The goal of this activity was to survey the best SAR-based measurement and error characterization approaches currently in practice. To this end, four experiments were carried out, related to different processing techniques and scenarios, namely differential SAR interferometry, multi aperture SAR interferometry and offset-tracking of incoherent as well as of partially-coherent data. For each task, participants were provided with common datasets covering areas located on the Greenland ice-sheet margin and asked to provide mean velocity maps, quality characterization and a description of processing algorithms and parameters. The results were then intercompared and validated against GPS data, revealing in several cases significant differences in terms of coverage and accuracy. The algorithmic steps and parameters influencing the coverage, accuracy and spatial resolution of the measurements are discussed in detail for each technique, as well as the consistency between quality parameters and validation results. This allows several recommendations to be formulated, in particular concerning procedures which can reduce the impact of analyst decisions, and which are often found to be the cause of sub-optimal algorithm performance.
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