Eric Rignot

Eric Rignot
NASA · Public domain · source
Name	Eric Rignot
Birth date	1962
Birth place	Amiens, France
Nationality	French-American
Fields	Glaciology, Geophysics, Remote Sensing, Climate Science
Workplaces	University of California, Irvine, Jet Propulsion Laboratory, NASA, University of California, Santa Cruz, University of Grenoble
Alma mater	École Centrale de Paris, University of Grenoble, University of Paris
Known for	Ice sheet dynamics, Antarctic and Greenland mass balance, remote sensing of ice, grounding line migration
Awards	Chevalier of the Ordre national du Mérite, Prince Albert I Medal, Mohn Prize

Eric Rignot Eric Rignot is a French-American glaciologist and geophysicist known for pioneering work on ice sheet dynamics and satellite remote sensing of polar regions. He is recognized for leadership in quantifying mass loss from the Greenland Ice Sheet and the Antarctic Ice Sheet, integrating observations from instruments such as RADARSAT, ERS-1, ERS-2, ICESat, and CryoSat-2. Rignot has held senior research positions at institutions including the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, University of California, Irvine, and the University of California, Santa Cruz.

Early life and education

Rignot was born in Amiens, France, and completed undergraduate and graduate studies in engineering and geoscience at institutions including École Centrale de Paris and the University of Grenoble. He earned a Ph.D. in geophysics focusing on ice dynamics and geodetic methods at the University of Paris system. During his doctoral and postdoctoral training he collaborated with research centers such as the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique and international programs including European Space Agency missions like ERS-1.

Career and positions

Rignot's career spans academic, governmental, and research laboratory roles. He served as a research scientist at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory and later as a faculty member at the University of California, Irvine and an adjunct researcher at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography. He has been a principal investigator on projects funded by agencies including NASA, the National Science Foundation, and the European Space Agency, and participated in field campaigns coordinated with British Antarctic Survey, Alfred Wegener Institute, and Lamont–Doherty Earth Observatory. Rignot directed or co-led teams that developed algorithms for interferometric synthetic aperture radar (InSAR) processing used by RADARSAT-1, RADARSAT-2, and Sentinel-1 platforms. He has served on advisory panels for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and scientific committees for programs such as Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research.

Research contributions and discoveries

Rignot produced influential findings on ice sheet behavior, tidal forcing, grounding line retreat, and subglacial melting. He quantified accelerating ice discharge from outlet glaciers in Greenland, documenting connections with warmer Atlantic waters observed by Arctic Ocean research cruises and modeled in studies with groups at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution and Scripps Institution of Oceanography. In Antarctica, Rignot led analyses demonstrating rapid retreat of grounding lines in West Antarctica, implicating marine ice-sheet instability in sectors draining into the Amundsen Sea and highlighting vulnerabilities at the Thwaites Glacier and Pine Island Glacier. His work combined satellite altimetry from ICESat and ICESSat-2 with gravimetry from GRACE and synthetic aperture radar from ERS-2 to separate surface mass balance signals from dynamic mass loss, influencing projections produced by modeling groups at Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory, National Center for Atmospheric Research, and MIT. Rignot also contributed methods for estimating basal melt rates beneath ice shelves using radar and oceanographic observations coordinated with teams from University of Cambridge and University of Tasmania. His studies of grounding line migration leveraged concepts from the Weertman and Schoof theoretical frameworks and were validated by collaborations with researchers at Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique and University of Oslo.

Awards and honors

Rignot's scientific contributions have been recognized with several awards and honors. He received the Prince Albert I Medal for oceanography and polar research, the Mohn Prize for earth sciences, and was named a Chevalier of the Ordre national du Mérite by the French Republic. He has been elected to membership in professional societies including the American Geophysical Union and has held fellowships and visiting positions at institutions such as California Institute of Technology and Columbia University's Lamont–Doherty Earth Observatory.

Selected publications

- Rignot, E., Jacobs, S., Mouginot, J., & Scheuchl, B. (Year). "Acceleration of ice discharge from Antarctic outlet glaciers" — co-authored work cited by IPCC, Nature, and Science communities. - Rignot, E., Velicogna, I., van den Broeke, M., Monaghan, A., & Lenaerts, J. (Year). "Mass balance of the Greenland Ice Sheet from 1992 to 2018" — multidisciplinary synthesis involving GRACE, ICESat, and surface mass balance models used by European Commission assessments. - Rignot, E., Mouginot, J., & Scheuchl, B. (Year). "Retreat of Pine Island Glacier grounding line" — influential in studies of Amundsen Sea dynamics and West Antarctica stability. - Rignot, E., & Jacobs, S. (Year). "Ice-shelf melt driven by oceanographic changes" — integrated observational and modeling approaches connecting oceanographic cruises by NOAA and British Antarctic Survey with satellite records. - Rignot, E., Scheuchl, B., & Mouginot, J. (Year). "Mapping grounding lines and glacier velocities with InSAR" — methodological advances applied to Sentinel-1 and RADARSAT-2 datasets.

Category:Glaciologists Category:French scientists Category:American scientists