Cecilia Bitz

About

Cecilia Bitz is a professor and chair in the Department of Atmospheric Sciences at the University of Washington. Her research focuses on climate and climate change in the high latitudes on Earth, especially involving the cryosphere. She employs a variety of models for her research, ranging from simple reduced models to sophisticated earth-system models. She has worked with several astrobiology students to teach them about climate modeling and conduct simulations relevant for Earth's deep past and exoplanet climates. Her work contributes to understanding the effects of climate dynamics, orbital configurations, and stellar energy distribution on planetary habitability and climate stability, which are relevant for astrobiology and the study of exoplanets.

Research topics

• Oceanography
• Environmental science
• Climatology
• Geology
• Atmospheric sciences

Selected publications

• Antarctic Sea Ice Area in CMIP6

  Geophysical Research Letters · 2020 · 389 citations

  Senior authorCorresponding

  Abstract Fully coupled climate models have long shown a wide range of Antarctic sea ice states and evolution over the satellite era. Here, we present a high‐level evaluation of Antarctic sea ice in 40 models from the most recent phase of the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP6). Many models capture key characteristics of the mean seasonal cycle of sea ice area (SIA), but some simulate implausible historical mean states compared to satellite observations, leading to large intermodel spre…

  DOI

• Tropical teleconnection impacts on Antarctic climate changes

  Nature Reviews Earth & Environment · 2021 · 259 citations

  DOI

• Sea-ice-free Arctic during the Last Interglacial supports fast future loss

  Nature Climate Change · 2020 · 149 citations

  DOI

• Understanding the drivers and predictability of record low Antarctic sea ice in austral winter 2023

  Communications Earth & Environment · 2024-11-20 · 20 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  Since the start of the satellite record in 1978, the three lowest summertime minima in Antarctic sea ice area all occurred within the last seven years and culminated in record low sea ice in austral winter 2023. During this period sea ice area was over 2 million km2 below climatology, a 5 sigma anomaly and 0.9 million km2 below the previous largest seasonal anomaly. Here we show that a fully-coupled Earth System Model nudged to observed winds reproduces the record low, and that the 2023 transiti…

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Machine Learning for Daily Forecasts of Arctic Sea Ice Motion: An Attribution Assessment of Model Predictive Skill

  Artificial Intelligence for the Earth Systems · 2023-08-17 · 16 citations

  articleOpen access

  Abstract Physics-based simulations of Arctic sea ice are highly complex, involving transport between different phases, length scales, and time scales. Resultantly, numerical simulations of sea ice dynamics have a high computational cost and model uncertainty. We employ data-driven machine learning (ML) to make predictions of sea ice motion. The ML models are built to predict present-day sea ice velocity given present-day wind velocity and previous-day sea ice concentration and velocity. Models a…

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

Recent grants

• Collaborative Research: Polar Amplification and High-Latitude Climate Sensitivity in Global Climate Models

  NSF · $293k · 2003–2007

• Deciphering the Antarctic MSA-sea Ice Link with a Combined Regional Forecast and Atmospheric Chemistry Model

  NSF · $375k · 2008–2012

• Short-term predictability of Arctic climate

  NSF · $308k · 2009–2013

Frequent coauthors

• Edward Blanchard‐Wrigglesworth

  University of Washington

  61 shared

• Kyle C. Armour

  43 shared

• Marika M. Holland

  40 shared

• David S. Battisti

  University of Washington

  39 shared

• Lettie A. Roach

  Columbia University

  36 shared

• Martin Vancoppenolle

  Sorbonne University Abu Dhabi

  32 shared

• François Massonnet

  UCLouvain

  30 shared

• Eric J. Steig

  University of Washington

  24 shared

Education

• Ph.D., Atmospheric Sciences

  University of Washington

  1994

• M.S., Atmospheric Sciences

  University of Washington

  1991

• B.S., Atmospheric Sciences

  University of California, Berkeley

  1988

Similar researchers at University of Washington

• Roger Buickh-90
• Eric Agolh-88
• Jody Demingh-64