Sharon E. Nicholson is a meteorology professor at

Florida State University Florida State University (FSU or Florida State) is a Public university, public research university in Tallahassee, Florida, United States. It is a senior member of the State University System of Florida and a preeminent university in the s ...

(FSU) in the Department of Earth, Ocean and Atmospheric Science. Nicholson has been teaching about and researching climates of Africa. Nicholson has earned the

Humboldt Award The Humboldt Research Award (), also known informally as the Humboldt Prize, is an award given by the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation of Germany to internationally renowned scientists and scholars who work outside of Germany in recognition of t ...

, the

Fulbright The Fulbright Program, including the Fulbright–Hays Program, is one of several United States cultural exchange programs with the goal of improving intercultural relations, cultural diplomacy, and intercultural competence between the people ...

Global Scholar award, a

National Science Foundation The U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) is an Independent agencies of the United States government#Examples of independent agencies, independent agency of the Federal government of the United States, United States federal government that su ...

Award.

Biography

Sharon Nicholson got her bachelor's, master's, and doctoral degrees in meteorology at the

University of Wisconsin–Madison The University of Wisconsin–Madison (University of Wisconsin, Wisconsin, UW, UW–Madison, or simply Madison) is a public land-grant research university in Madison, Wisconsin, United States. It was founded in 1848 when Wisconsin achieved st ...

. In 1985, she became the only female faculty member at the FSU Department of Earth, Ocean and Atmospheric Science, beginning as an associate professor. In 1991, she was promoted to full professor of meteorology, and as of 2020, continues to work and teach at the FSU.

Research

Paired with

Compton Tucker Compton Tucker is an Earth scientist and academic. He is a Senior Earth Scientist in the Laboratory for Hydrospheric and Biospheric Sciences at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center in the Earth Science Division in Greenbelt, Maryland, USA. Tucker is ...

, a NASA

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 ...

scientist, Nicholson disproved a worldwide claim about recent

Sahara desert The Sahara (, ) is a desert spanning across North Africa. With an area of , it is the largest hot desert in the world and the list of deserts by area, third-largest desert overall, smaller only than the deserts of Antarctica and the northern Ar ...

spreading. They studied nearly two decades of

Sahel The Sahel region (; ), or Sahelian acacia savanna, is a Biogeography, biogeographical region in Africa. It is the Ecotone, transition zone between the more humid Sudanian savannas to its south and the drier Sahara to the north. The Sahel has a ...

satellite observations to confirm that the desert ebbs and flows, but does not enlarge. Nicholson also established that the Sahara's behavior depends on climate cycles (year-to-year rainfalls and droughts). Their study was published in the journal ''

Ambio ''Ambio: A Journal of Environment and Society'' is a monthly peer-reviewed scientific journal published by Springer Science+Business Media on behalf of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. It was established in 1972. The editor-in-chief is Bo S� ...

''. Nicholson also teamed up with Dorcas N. Leposo, a research meteorologist from the

Botswana Botswana, officially the Republic of Botswana, is a landlocked country in Southern Africa. Botswana is topographically flat, with approximately 70 percent of its territory part of the Kalahari Desert. It is bordered by South Africa to the sou ...

Meteorological Services, to establish that

El Niño EL, El or el may refer to: Arts and entertainment Fictional entities * El, a character from the manga series ''Shugo Chara!'' by Peach-Pit * Eleven (''Stranger Things'') (El), a fictional character in the TV series ''Stranger Things'' * El, fami ...

was the primary cause of drought and famine in

. They reviewed 40 years of Southern Africa climate data to explore El Niño's impact on the region and estimate the impact of future climate change there. The Botswana government used their research to mitigate the possible effects of El Niño's onset. As an FSU professor and expert on the African climate, Nicholson visited Africa to closely study rainfall and fog. She also took part in climate change research with the

National Center for Atmospheric Research The US National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR ) is a US federally funded research and development center (FFRDC) managed by the nonprofit University Corporation for Atmospheric Research (UCAR) and funded by the National Science Foundat ...

, and was co-author of a study published in the journal ''

Science Science is a systematic discipline that builds and organises knowledge in the form of testable hypotheses and predictions about the universe. Modern science is typically divided into twoor threemajor branches: the natural sciences, which stu ...

''. In 2010, working with the

Gobabeb The Gobabeb Namib Research Institute, short: Gobabeb, is a centre for dry land training and research in Namibia. It is located in the Namib Desert, south-east of Walvis Bay. Gobabeb was founded by the Austrian entomologist Charles Koch in ...

Training and Research Centre, Nicholson was the first to identify a low-level weather

jet stream Jet streams are fast flowing, narrow thermal wind, air currents in the Earth's Atmosphere of Earth, atmosphere. The main jet streams are located near the altitude of the tropopause and are westerly winds, flowing west to east around the gl ...

over

Namibia Namibia, officially the Republic of Namibia, is a country on the west coast of Southern Africa. Its borders include the Atlantic Ocean to the west, Angola and Zambia to the north, Botswana to the east and South Africa to the south; in the no ...

. Working with specialists from France and Germany, Nicholson researched the jet stream's possible influence on climate in equatorial and

southern Africa Southern Africa is the southernmost region of Africa. No definition is agreed upon, but some groupings include the United Nations geoscheme for Africa, United Nations geoscheme, the intergovernmental Southern African Development Community, and ...

and its effect on rainfall in

West Africa West Africa, also known as Western Africa, is the westernmost region of Africa. The United Nations geoscheme for Africa#Western Africa, United Nations defines Western Africa as the 16 countries of Benin, Burkina Faso, Cape Verde, The Gambia, Gha ...

. Nicholson's research has influenced areas beyond meteorology, such as

hydrology Hydrology () is the scientific study of the movement, distribution, and management of water on Earth and other planets, including the water cycle, water resources, and drainage basin sustainability. A practitioner of hydrology is called a hydro ...

physical geography Physical geography (also known as physiography) is one of the three main branches of geography. Physical geography is the branch of natural science which deals with the processes and patterns in the natural environment such as the atmosphere, h ...

remote sensing Remote sensing is the acquisition of information about an physical object, object or phenomenon without making physical contact with the object, in contrast to in situ or on-site observation. The term is applied especially to acquiring inform ...

, arid land studies and

paleoclimatology Paleoclimatology ( British spelling, palaeoclimatology) is the scientific study of climates predating the invention of meteorological instruments, when no direct measurement data were available. As instrumental records only span a tiny part of ...

. One of Nicholson's colleagues opined that thanks to Nicholson's contributions, FSU became recognized as the leading academic institution in the U.S. for research on the climate of Africa. Nicholson also inspired more students to get involved in the study of meteorology.

Awards

In 2019, Nicholson earned a

Global Scholar Award for executing research in

, France (

University of Montpellier The University of Montpellier () is a public university, public research university located in Montpellier, in south-east of France. Established in 1220, the University of Montpellier is one of the List of oldest universities in continuous opera ...

), and Germany (

Karlsruhe Institute of Technology The Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT; ) is both a German public research university in Karlsruhe, Baden-Württemberg, and a research center of the Helmholtz Association. KIT was created in 2009 when the University of Karlsruhe (), founde ...

). Nicholson's study of climate over arid environments earned her the

Humboldt Research Award The Humboldt Research Award (), also known informally as the Humboldt Prize, is an award given by the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation of Germany to internationally renowned scientists and scholars who work outside of Germany in recognition of t ...

, given by the

Alexander von Humboldt Foundation The Alexander von Humboldt Foundation () is a foundation that promotes international academic cooperation between scientists and scholars from Germany and abroad. Established by the government of the Federal Republic of Germany, it is funded by t ...

in Germany. In 2009, she was honored by the

American Meteorological Society The American Meteorological Society (AMS) is a scientific and professional organization in the United States promoting and disseminating information about the atmospheric, oceanic, and hydrologic sciences. Its mission is to advance the atmosph ...

with the Charles E. Anderson Award. Nicholson has been awarded several grants from the

for her research in the

Congo Basin The Congo Basin () is the sedimentary basin of the Congo River. The Congo Basin is located in Central Africa, in a region known as west equatorial Africa. The Congo Basin region is sometimes known simply as the Congo. It contains some of the larg ...

. The National Science Foundation Faculty Award granted her $250,000 for women scientists and engineers.

References

Literature cited

External links

Official CV from FSU website
{{DEFAULTSORT:Nicholson, Sharon Living people American women academics Women meteorologists American meteorologists Florida State University people Humboldt Research Award recipients Year of birth missing (living people)