Claire L. Parkinson

Claire L. Parkinson has been a climatologist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center since 1978, with a research emphasis on polar sea ice and climate change. She is also Project Scientist for the Aqua satellite mission, aimed at improved understanding of the coupled atmosphere/ocean/land/ice system, has done field work in both polar regions, and has written books on satellite Earth observations and the history of science. She has a B.A. from Wellesley College and a Ph.D. from Ohio State University and has served on committees for NASA, NOAA, and the National Academy of Sciences. She is a Fellow of both the American Meteorological Society and Phi Beta Kappa and received a NASA Outstanding Leadership Medal in 2003 and the Goldthwait Polar Medal from Ohio State’s Byrd Polar Research Center in 2004.