About

Amanda Lynch is a professor associated with the Institute at Brown for Environment and Society, located at 85 Waterman St, Providence RI 02906. Her research group, which includes members such as Maria Luisa Rocha Santos da Silva and Brian Kao, focuses on environmental and climate-related studies, particularly in the Arctic region. The group has a diverse team of postdoctoral researchers, Ph.D. graduates, and students, indicating a broad engagement in scientific research related to environmental sciences. While the specific details of her research focus are not explicitly described in the provided text, her affiliation with the Institute at Brown for Environment and Society and her leadership of a research group dedicated to Arctic studies suggest her work involves understanding environmental processes, climate change impacts, and possibly bio-geosciences related to polar regions. The group’s extensive network of former members and collaborators across various institutions worldwide highlights her active role in advancing research in these areas.

Research topics

• Geology
• Environmental science
• Oceanography
• Ecology
• Physical geography
• Climatology
• Geography

Selected publications

• Climate Change and the Reconfiguration of Arctic Access

  AJIL Unbound · 2026-01-01

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  The Arctic is warming faster than any other region on Earth, with surface air temperatures increasing at a rate nearly four times the global average. 1 This amplification of global change has been reshaping the Arctic for decades, altering sea ice extent and thickness, snow regimes, permafrost stability, and hydrological systems. Against this backdrop, a persistent narrative has taken hold that the diminishing cryosphere 2 is setting the table for opportunity: opening the Arctic to navigation, development, and exploitation. But this thaw renders the Arctic neither benign nor uniformly accessible. The region remains frozen for most of the year, dark for months at a time, increasingly storm-prone, and profoundly remote. Rather than producing a uniform expansion of access, accelerating climate change is reconfiguring when, where, and for whom access is possible, creating patterns of simultaneous opening and closing that are seasonal, uneven, and uncertain.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• ANÁLISE DO CURSO PREPARATÓRIO PARA ENTRADA NO CADASTRO NACIONAL DE ADOÇÃO DO TRIBUNAL DE JUSTIÇA DO PARÁ, SOB A PERSPECTIVA DA PSICANÁLISE

  Revista Contemporânea · 2025-01-10

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  A adoção é um processo desafiador e complexo. No Brasil, enquanto o Sistema Nacional de Adoção (SNA) registra mais de 35 mil pretendentes, apenas cerca de 5 mil crianças e adolescentes estão disponíveis para adoção. Este processo segue critérios rigorosos definidos pelo Tribunal de Justiça, orientado pelo Estatuto da Criança e do Adolescente (ECA), visando garantir os direitos às crianças e adolescentes à espera da adoção. Este artigo se concentra em um dos critérios: o curso preparatório oferecido pelo Tribunal de Justiça do Estado do Pará (TJ-PA) aos candidatos da adoção, com o objetivo de avaliar sua eficácia na formação emocional, psicológica e legal dos futuros pais. A pesquisa utiliza uma abordagem psicanalítica para analisar como o conteúdo e os métodos do curso influenciam as motivações e expectativas dos candidatos, além de identificar os possíveis impactos emocionais e psicológicos dessa preparação. A análise foi feita com base na apostila Diálogos Sobre Adoção, fornecida pelo setor psicossocial da 1ª Vara da Infância e Juventude de Belém.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Enhancing Sea Ice Concentration Resolution in a Northern Sea Route Strait Using a Generative Adversarial Network

  Journal of Geophysical Research Machine Learning and Computation · 2025-02-17

  articleOpen access

  Abstract Straits are strategically and economically vital due to their role as maritime choke points, controlling access to regions and resources. This is particularly pertinent in the Arctic, where navigability along critical shipping routes relies on access through straits that are frequently ice impacted. With the retreat of Arctic sea ice under anthropogenic climate change, scenarios using CMIP6 projections have the potential to provide valuable insights into future maritime accessibility regimes. However, typical climate model spatial resolutions limit the capacity to represent Arctic straits accurately. This study introduces a novel approach, the sea Ice Concentration Enhancement Generative Adversarial Network (ICE‐GAN), to enhance the spatial resolution of sea ice concentration (SIC) in Vilkitsky Strait, a passage along the Northern Sea Route (NSR). By employing the ICE‐GAN model, the spatial resolution is functionally increased from to . The approach is prototyped using ERA5 Reanalysis training data to predict ice cover for 2021 and 2022. The results indicate that the ICE‐GAN method outperforms, across multiple metrics, standard interpolation techniques such as Nearest Neighbor Interpolation and Bilinear Interpolation, both used in maritime accessibility models, as well as the super‐resolution convolutional neural network, the best practice method for super‐resolution in SIC. Importantly, the approach is robust to the non‐stationarity of the sea ice record. Moreover, by incorporating a physics‐informed approach into the ICE‐GAN, the model is able to further improve the accurate representation of sea ice cover in the studied Strait.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• The Central Arctic Ocean as a beacon of hope for the global ocean

  npj Ocean Sustainability · 2025-10-17 · 1 citations

  articleOpen access

  The global ocean faces unprecedented challenges from overfishing, pollution, and climate change. The Central Arctic Ocean Fisheries Agreement is a rare, if not unprecedented, example of precautionary action in marine management. Further action is needed to address other forms of industrial activity in the region. Done well, this example can provide a model for sustainable ocean management around the world, based on sound evidence, inclusive governance, and long-term thinking.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Predicting snow structures relevant to reindeer husbandry

  Arctic Antarctic and Alpine Research · 2024-10-01

  articleOpen access

  Snow conditions in the High North are an important control on wintertime forage availability for reindeer, and under climate change, they are changing rapidly. In the European Arctic, this has the potential to disrupt traditional reindeer herding practices, reindeer health, and local culture (including that of Indigenous communities like the Sámi). At the same time, Norwegian coastal cities are competing to act as multi-model transportation hubs as sea-ice retreat creates expectations for increased marine accessibility. An “Arctic Railway” connecting Rovaniemi to Kirkenes has been proposed to support these port developments, but this route passes through rangelands managed by Sámi and local herding communities. This study develops an assessment of past and future snow characteristics relevant to reindeer health to provide a context for understanding the impacts of this infrastructure development. Climate model and detailed snowpack simulations were performed for 1950 to 2100 along the proposed route. Results show that deep snow becomes less frequent and spring thaw advances, favorable to reindeer. However, icy snow conditions become more frequent, potentially forcing herds from tundra and farmland to forested areas. This suggests policy alternatives that focus on the development and maintenance of migration corridors to allow appropriate movement of reindeer herds. Melting Arctic sea ice is improving access to Arctic Ocean shipping routes, creating an incentive for Arctic coastal communities to develop their port facilities. To be successful, these ports must be connected to major European population centers and a railway connecting Rovaniemi, Finland, to Kirkenes, Norway, has been proposed as an efficient option for making this connection. However, such a railway would run through reindeer rangelands managed by Sámi and local herding communities, potentially disrupting herding practices, reindeer health, and traditional cultures. Because snow conditions are a major control on wintertime food security for reindeer, this study provides future projections of relevant snow characteristics along the proposed route to help understand how the construction of the railway may affect local communities. Results show that snow structures in tundra and cleared pastures become less hospitable, potentially forcing herds to forested areas. As such, the development and maintenance of old-growth forest landscapes for foraging zones and migration corridors is critical. The methodology developed here is applicable to other questions such as water resource management.

  PublisherDOI

• How to Engage and Adapt to Unprecedented Extremes

  Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society · 2024-05-31 · 5 citations

  articleOpen access

  Exploring Unprecedented ExtremesWhat: Facing the urgent challenge of extreme weather and climate-related events, our societal frameworks for "resilience" and "adaptation" are proving to be insufficient.This paper introduces the "Exploring Unprecedented Extremes" workshop, which was convened to elucidate the research gap in light of such challenges.The workshop tackled a broad spectrum of issues, ranging from assessing out-of-sample climatic events that defy traditional modeling approaches to enhancing the communication of risks and likelihoods associated with such unprecedented events.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Urgency Across Cultural Timescapes Informs Climate Change Vulnerability

  Mathematics online first collections · 2023-01-01 · 1 citations

  book-chapterSenior author
  PublisherDOI

• New insights into projected Arctic sea road: operational risks, economic values, and policy implications

  Climatic Change · 2023-03-20 · 25 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior author
  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Data from: The interaction of ice and law in Arctic marine accessibility

  Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research) · 2022-05-11

  datasetOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  Sea ice levies an impost on maritime navigability in the Arctic. But ice cover diminution due to anthropogenic climate change is generating expectations for improved accessibility in coming decades. Projections of sea ice cover retreating preferentially from the eastern Arctic suggest key provisions of international law of the sea will require revision. Specifically, protections against marine pollution in ice covered seas enshrined in Article 234 of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea have been used in recent decades to extend jurisdictional competence over the Northern Sea Route only loosely associated with environmental outcomes. Projections show that plausible open water routes through international waters may be accessible by mid-century under all but the most aggressive of emissions control scenarios. While inter- and intra-annual variability places the economic viability of these routes in question for some time, the inevitability of a seasonally ice-free Arctic will be attended by a reduction of regulatory friction and a recalibration of associated legal frameworks.

  PublisherDOI

• Arctic Maritime Cyclone Distribution and Trends in the ERA5 Reanalysis

  Journal of Applied Meteorology and Climatology · 2022-02-07 · 2 citations

  articleSenior author

  Abstract We present a tracking algorithm for synoptic to meso- α -scale Arctic cyclones that differentiates between cold- and warm-core systems. The algorithm is applied to the ERA5 reanalysis north of 60°N from 1950 to 2019. In this dataset, over one-half of the cyclones that meet minimum intensity and duration thresholds can be classified as cold-core systems. Systems that undergo transition, typically from cold to warm core, make up 27.2% of cyclones and are longer lived. The relatively infrequent warm-core cyclones are more intense and are most common in winter. The Arctic-wide occurrence of maritime cyclones has increased from 1979 to 2019 when compared with the period from 1950 to 1978, but the trends have high interannual variability. This shift has ramifications for transportation, fisheries, and extractive industries, as well as impacts on communities across the Arctic.

  PublisherDOI

Recent grants

• NNA Track 1: Collaborative Research: Navigating Convergent Pressures on Arctic Development

  NSF · $1.2M · 2020–2025

• CNH-S: NNA: Modeling Risk from Black Carbon in a Coupled Natural-Human System at the Arctic Ice Edge

  NSF · $624k · 2018–2022

• Navigating the New Arctic (NNA): Co-production of shorefast ice knowledge in Uummannaq Bay, Greenland

  NSF · $479k · 2018–2022

Frequent coauthors

• David A. Bailey

  NSF National Center for Atmospheric Research

  60 shared

• Xueke Li

  State Key Laboratory of Information Engineering in Surveying Mapping and Remote Sensing

  44 shared

• Jason Beringer

  43 shared

• Siri Veland

  NORCE Norwegian Research Centre

  35 shared

• F. Stuart Chapin

  University of Alaska Fairbanks

  31 shared

• Mark C. Serreze

  31 shared

• Jeffrey R. Key

  NOAA Center for Satellite Applications and Research

  30 shared

• T. E. Arbetter

  Brown University

  30 shared

Labs

• Amanda LynchPI

Education

• BSc. (Hons), Applied Mathematics

  Monash University

• PhD, Meteorology

  University of Melbourne

  1993