Cecilie Mauritzen (born 1961 in Oslo) is a Norwegian physical oceanographer who studies connections between ocean currents and climate change.

Education and career

Mauritzen works as a researcher in the

Norwegian Meteorological Institute The Norwegian Meteorological Institute (), also known internationally as MET Norway, is Norway's national meteorological institute. It provides weather forecasts for civilian and military uses and conducts research in meteorology, oceanography an ...

. She graduated from the

University of Bergen The University of Bergen () is a public university, public research university in Bergen, Norway. As of 2021, the university had over 4,000 employees and 19,000 students. It was established by an act of parliament in 1946 consolidating several sci ...

in 1987, and earned a PhD in 1994 from the

Massachusetts Institute of Technology The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a Private university, private research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. Established in 1861, MIT has played a significant role in the development of many areas of moder ...

. After working for

NASA The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA ) is an independent agencies of the United States government, independent agency of the federal government of the United States, US federal government responsible for the United States ...

at the

Goddard Space Flight Center The Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC) is a major NASA space research laboratory located approximately northeast of Washington, D.C., in Greenbelt, Maryland, United States. Established on May 1, 1959, as NASA's first space flight center, GSFC ...

and for the

Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution The Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI, acronym pronounced ) is a private, nonprofit research and higher education facility dedicated to the study of marine science and engineering. Established in 1930 in Woods Hole, Massachusetts, it i ...

, she joined the Norwegian Meteorological Institute in 2002, and eventually became director of the climate division there. She was also the director of the

Centre for International Climate and Environmental Research The CICERO Center for International Climate Research (abbreviated CICERO; ) is an interdisciplinary research centre for climate research and environmental science/environmental studies in Oslo. CICERO was established by the Government of Norway i ...

(CICERO) from 2012 to 2013. She returned to the Norwegian Meteorological Institute after working as vice president for Research at

DNV GL Det Norske Veritas (DNV), formerly DNV GL, is an international accredited registrar and classification society headquartered in Høvik, Norway. DNV provides services for several industries, including maritime, oil and gas, renewable energy, ...

, and as a head of climate research at the

Norwegian Institute for Water Research The Norwegian Institute for Water Research (NIVA) is an environmental research organisation which researches, monitors, assesses and studies freshwater, coastal and marine environments and environmental technology. Services and research NIVA's ar ...

(NIVA). Her early contributions to oceanography are described in the textbook "Ocean Circulation in Three Dimensions" by Barry Klinger ("''What Wrong Looks Like from the Inside"):''

''The Nordic Seas provide another example of conventional wisdom being replaced by a new idea. On global scales, warm water becomes colder and denser as it flows to polar regions, where the densest water sinks as part of the process of deep water formation. Therefore it was easy to accept a conceptual model of deep water formation in the Nordic Seas in which surface water enters from the Atlantic and cools as it flows into central regions of the basin, and part of the resulting water mass returns to the Atlantic in the dense overflows at the Greenland-Iceland-Scotland Ridge. Some of the densest surface water in the basin occurs in that area, which undergoes intense winter heat loss to the atmosphere and dramatic convection. Numerical models of convection'' ''show how an isolated region of cooling creates a subsurface tower of dense water which carries water downward when it slumps due to eddy generation.'' ''This model of Nordic Seas circulation was overturned by Norwegian oceanographer Cecilie Mauritzen in her PhD dissertation'. She showed that the water took a longer route from the inflow to the outflow, with most of the cooling occurring in boundary currents around the periphery of the Nordic Seas and in the Arctic Ocean. Much of the large heat loss in the central basin was merely part of the seasonal cycle of temperature change of a thick layer of water, with relatively small volume transports exchanged with incoming or outgoing water. Later, numerical experiments such as showed that a fluid exchange between cooling basin and the rest of the ocean mostly occurred around the basin boundaries, with cold but relatively quiescent water in the middle'' "

In 2004, Mauritzen was included in the lead author team to write

IPCC Fourth Assessment Report ''Climate Change 2007'', the Fourth Assessment Report (AR4) of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), was published in 2007 and is the fourth in a series of reports intended to assess scientific, technical and soci ...

(2007), and since then she has focussed her work primarily on climate change. Nevertheless, in 2007–2009, during the

International Polar Year The International Polar Years (IPY) are collaborative, international efforts with intensive research focus on the polar regions. Karl Weyprecht, an Austro-Hungarian naval officer, motivated the endeavor in 1875, but died before it first occurred ...

, she led one of the Norwegian flagship projects: ''IAOOS Norway: Closing the loop''. She rejoined IPCC for the

Fifth Assessment Report The Fifth Assessment Report (AR5) of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is the fifth in a series of such reports and was completed in 2014.IPCC (2014The IPCC's Fifth Assessment Report (AR5) leaflet/ref> As had ...

(2014), as a lead author for the ocean chapter. Mauritzen's wide range of interests can best be described by the variety of her portfolio of research projects: only post 2020 she has led a project on machine learning on turbulence (Machine Ocean), a project on forecasting water quality (MARTINI) and an EU Horizon project on Integrated Assessment Modelling
WorldTrans - Transparent Assessments for Real People
. Mauritzen lives in Oslo and has two grown sons.

Recognition

Mauritzen is a member of th
Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters
and of th
Norwegian Scientific Academy for Polar Research
In 2011 she received the
Fram Award for Polar Research
, by the Committee for the Preservation of the Polar Ship Fram.

References

External links

Home page
* {{DEFAULTSORT:Mauritzen, Cecilie 1961 births Living people Norwegian oceanographers Women oceanographers University of Bergen alumni Massachusetts Institute of Technology alumni Members of the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters