Eric Rignot

About

Eric Rignot is the Donald Bren Professor of Earth System Science at the University of California, Irvine, where he also serves as Chair of the Department. He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences and has been with UCI since 2007. Prior to joining UCI, he worked at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), where he continues to serve as a Senior Research Scientist. Eric holds a Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from the University of Southern California and is an engineer from Ecole Centrale Paris, France. He is an expert on polar ice sheets and the effects of global climate change on the cryosphere. His research integrates satellite and airborne remote sensing data, field oceanographic surveys, and computer modeling using tools such as the JPL/UCI Ice Sheet System Model (ISSM) and the MIT general circulation model (MITgcm) to study glacier dynamics along the coasts of Antarctica, Greenland, Alaska, and Patagonia. His work has documented the acceleration of ice loss in these regions due to climate change and highlighted the critical role of ice-ocean interactions in driving glacier systems out of balance more rapidly than previously understood.

Research topics

• Geology
• Geomorphology
• Oceanography
• Climatology
• Physical geography
• Geography

Selected publications

• Continuity of Ice Sheet Mass Loss in Greenland and Antarctica From the GRACE and GRACE Follow‐On Missions

  Geophysical Research Letters · 2020 · 322 citations

  Abstract We examine data continuity between the Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) and GRACE Follow‐On (FO) missions over Greenland and Antarctica using independent data from the mass budget method, which calculates the difference between ice sheet surface mass balance and ice discharge at the periphery. For both ice sheets, we find consistent GRACE/GRACE‐FO time series across the data gap, at the continental and regional scales, and the data gap is confidently filled with mass budg…

  DOI

• The Scientific Legacy of NASA’s Operation IceBridge

  Reviews of Geophysics · 2021 · 147 citations

  Abstract The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA)’s Operation IceBridge (OIB) was a 13‐year (2009–2021) airborne mission to survey land and sea ice across the Arctic, Antarctic, and Alaska. Here, we review OIB’s goals, instruments, campaigns, key scientific results, and implications for future investigations of the cryosphere. OIB’s primary goal was to use airborne laser altimetry to bridge the gap in fine‐resolution elevation measurements of ice from space between the conclusion…

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Global Warming Has Accelerated: Are the United Nations and the Public Well-Informed?

  Environment Science and Policy for Sustainable Development · 2025-01-02 · 142 citations

  articleOpen access

  Global temperature leaped more than 0.4°C (0.7°F) during the past two years, the 12-month average peaking in August 2024 at +1.6°C relative to the temperature at the beginning of last century (the 1880-1920 average). This temperature jump was spurred by one of the periodic tropical El Niño warming events, but many Earth scientists were baffled by the magnitude of the global warming, which was twice as large as expected for the weak 2023-2024 El Niño. We find that most of the other half of the wa…

  PublisherDOI

• Heterogeneous melting near the Thwaites Glacier grounding line

  Nature · 2023 · 98 citations

  indicate that ice loss will continue. The relative impacts of mechanisms underlying recent retreat are however uncertain. Here we show sustained GL retreat from at least 2011 to 2020 and resolve mechanisms of ice-shelf melt at the submetre scale. Our conclusions are based on observations of the Thwaites Eastern Ice Shelf (TEIS) from an underwater vehicle, extending from the GL to 3 km oceanward and from the ice-ocean interface to the sea floor. These observations show a rough ice base above a se…

  DOI

• Suppressed basal melting in the eastern Thwaites Glacier grounding zone

  Nature · 2023 · 81 citations

  , resulting in strongly suppressed basal melting. Our results demonstrate that the canonical model of ice-shelf basal melting used to generate sea-level projections cannot reproduce observed melt rates beneath this critically important glacier, and that rapid and possibly unstable grounding-line retreat may be associated with relatively modest basal melt rates.

  DOI

Recent grants

• Three-dimensional Stokes grounding line dynamics with the open community JPL/UCI Ice Sheet System Model (ISSM).

  NSF · $275k · 2011–2014

Frequent coauthors

• J. Mouginot

  Institut polytechnique de Grenoble

  634 shared

• Mathieu Morlighem

  340 shared

• Romain Millan

  Université Grenoble Alpes

  235 shared

• B. Scheuchl

  196 shared

• Hélène Seroussi

  Dartmouth College

  180 shared

• I. Velicogna

  161 shared

• Eric Larour

  150 shared

• M. R. van den Broeke

  Utrecht University

  125 shared

Labs

• Rignot Research GroupPI

Education

• PhD, Electrical Engineering

  University of Southern California

• Master, Electrical Engineering

  University of Southern California

• Master, Aerospace Engineering

  University of Southern California

• Master, Air Espace

  Ecole centrale de Paris

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