The UK Centre for Polar Observation and Modelling was founded in 2000 by Professor Sir Duncan Wingham at University College London. Professor Sir Wingham was Director of CPOM from 2000 to 2005, and his expertise in the study of Earth’s ice sheets led to high impact publications on the widespread mass loss on the west Antarctic Ice Sheet. He also proposed and provided scientific leadership for the European Space Agency (ESA)’s CryoSat-1 satellite mission during his time as CPOM Director. For more information about the CryoSat mission and CPOM’s involvement, see our CryoSat page…
Professor Sir Wingham was succeeded as CPOM Director by Professor Seymour Laxon (University College London). Professor Laxon was an expert on satellite radar altimetry, and his work pioneered the use of satellite altimetry to measure sea ice thickness and surface circulation in polar oceans. This work supported the successful development of ESA’s CryoSat. Sadly, Professor Laxon died following an accident in 2013.
In 2014, the role of CPOM Director was succeeded by Professor Andrew Shepherd (University of Leeds). Professor Shepherd is an expert in remote observations of the cryosphere. In 2010, ESA’s CryoSat-2 mission was launched with Professor Andrew Shepherd as Principal Scientific Advisor. Professor Shepherd also provides leadership for international programmes, including ESA’s Antarctic Climate Change Initiative (CCI), which is producing long term and reliable satellite data records of the Antarctic Ice Sheet to this day, and the ESA/NASA Ice Sheet Mass Balance Intercomparison Project (IMBIE).
Over the years, CPOM has led many high profile, international projects. Since 2016, for example, CPOM has led on the Ice Sheet Model Intercomparison Project (ISMIP) alongside NASA, a scientific collaboration where researchers from all over the world worked together to understand to understand ice sheets, sea level rise, and their connection to climate change. CPOM also led on the UK development of the BISICLES Ice Sheet Model, a state of the art, high performance parallel ice sheet model, which has been integrated in the UKESM (UK Earth System Model).
