Cecilia Bitz's Homepage

"Hot times in the Arctic" An op-ed I was invited to write for the New York Times about the extreme warm conditions in the Arctic this winter.

Written and oral testimony given to the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee on 5 Mar 2015. And answers to Sen. Cantwell's follow-up questions.

Presentation giving at congressional briefing on 20 Mar 2013

My Curriculum Vitae

Field work in Antarctica Nov 2013

While I was a Fulbright Senior Scholar 2013-2014 to New Zealand, I did field work in Antarctica. My hosts were Drs. Inga Smith and Pat Langhorne at University of Otago, in Dunedin, NZ. Here I am holding a sea ice core extracted from the snow-covered land-fast first-year sea ice that I am standing on. Mt Erebus (3,794 m or 12,448 ft) on Ross Island is directly behind the core. Location: Camp Haskell, Event (project) K131 "Sea ice and Southern Ocean processes" camp, Haskell Strait, McMurdo Sound, Antarctica. Date: 4 November 2013. Photograph taken by Dr. Inga Smith, University of Otago and K131.

Art and Science

Beaded Anorak Project called "The Melt" with Scott Schuldt  

Sea Level Rise Sculpture at Seattle Art Museum

Recent Teaching

• Weather and Climate Prediction ATMS 380  Course web site

• Ice and Climate ATMS 514/ESS 535 Course web site

• Climate Modeling ATMS 559 Course web site

• Atmospheric Motions I, ATMS 441,  Course web site

• Climate and Climate Change, ATMS 211,  Course web site 

• Ice and Climate Modeling, GPHYS/ATMS 514, winter 2001. Course summary and lab modeling project with downloadable energy balance model.

At summerschools I often have students use a sea ice thermodynamic model that I wrote. It is a good educational tool.

1. Download a tarfile of the Bitz and Lipscomb 1999 thermodynamic sea ice model, OR goto a directory with the individual files 
   
2. Draft lecture notes on global sea ice model and exercises I used with the simple model.
   

Public Outreach

For the past four years I have participated at the Polar Science Weekend at the Seattle Pacific Science Center. I showed posters on the greenhouse effect and sea ice retreat and demonstrated the art of climate modeling with a simple climate model I wrote for the weekend, see photograph. In 2009 I demonstrated the ice-albedo effect with a spectrometer aimed at different surface types (designed by Bonnie Light), see photograph with the "ocean" in front of me.

The link at the left lets you run the simple climate model I wrote for the Polar Science Weekend. You can explore the climate sensitivity to greenhouse gases, the solar constant, and ancient distributions of continental landmasses. It is fun and easy to use.

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A few more items just for fun

What is wrong with this picture? The image at left was shown at the end of the Day After Tomorrow, a recent blockbuster movie about climate change. Ice and snow on land cover large areas of North America. Click on the picture or here for a discussion about the impossibility of the sea ice cover!