Faculty bio | Research website | Twitter

Sarah Cooley’s research focuses on dynamic hydrologic change using satellite data. She is particularly interested in global water resources, Arctic surface hydrology and Arctic coastal change and its impact on communities. Her research uses new satellite technologies, including both NASA and commercial satellite data to study a wide range of topics including global water storage variability, shorefast sea ice breakup, Arctic lake area dynamics, and pan-Arctic river ice breakup. She has also participated in numerous field campaigns across Greenland, Northern Canada and Alaska. Her current research is funded by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). Cooley has a doctorate in Earth, Environmental and Planetary Sciences from Brown University, an Master of Philosophy in Polar Studies from the University of Cambridge and a Bachelor of Science in Geophysics from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill where she was a Morehead-Cain Scholar.

Recent Media:
Warming and drying climate puts many of the world’s biggest lakes in peril (Inside Climate News, May 18, 2023)
Why NASA’s new mission will study Earth’s water from space (Los Angeles Times, Dec. 14, 2022)