Sebastian Mernild

In 2018, he was awarded the Danish Broadcast Corporation's prestigious dissemination award, the Rosenkjær Prize, which since 1963 has been awarded to prominent scientists and cultural figures who have succeeded in communicating complex scientific topics.

In 2016, he became the managing director of the 'Nansen Center' (part of Bjerknes Centre for Climate Research) in Bergen, Norway, a renowned climate research centre in Europe. He was elected pro-vice-chancellor (Danish: Prorektor) of the University of Southern Denmark in 2020.

In 2016, he became a full professor at the Faculty of Engineering and Science at the Western Norway University of Applied Sciences, Sogndal, but shortly afterwards he was appointed Managing Director of the Nansen Environmental and Remote Sensing Center (NERSC) in Bergen. He was elected pro-vice-chancellor (Danish: Prorektor) of the University of Southern Denmark in 2020. He is also the director (Program Chair) of the newly established Climate Centre of the University of Southern Denmark. Mernild is also partly a professor of climate change and glaciology at the Geophysical Institute of the University of Bergen in Norway.

Mernild is one of the world's leading climate scientists in the fields of glaciology and hydrology, specializing in the impacts of climate change in the Arctic and on the cryosphere, especially the ice sheets (glacier mass balance) and water levels. He has contributed to a number of international scientific reports, including the annual Arctic Report Card from National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and the Melting Snow and Ice: A Call for Action report, which Vice President Al Gore presented at the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen in 2015.

Mernild has been an IPCC author for the United Nations since 2010. Initially a contributing author on the IPCC Fifth Assessment Report, he was most recently lead author on the IPCC Sixth Assessment Report.

In between his PhD degree and D.Sc. degree, he worked at the International Arctic Research Center of the University of Alaska Fairbanks, until 2009. He then worked as a scientific researcher at the COSIM (Climate, Ocean and Sea Ice Modeling) Project of the Office of Science § Biological and Environmental Research, within the United States Department of Energy and the Department of Computational Physics and Methods at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, US until 2013, followed by three years as the research director of the Climate Change and Glaciology Laboratory at the Center for Scientific Studies in Valdivia, Chile until 2016.

In 2004, and again between 2009 and 2010, he was a visiting professor at the Cooperative Institute for Research in the Atmosphere at Colorado State University, and from 2007 to 2008 (and again in 2015), he was a visiting professor at the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences at the University of Colorado Boulder. In 2008, he was a visiting professor at the Institute for Low Temperature Sciences at Hokkaido University, Japan. Between 2011 and 2012, he was a visiting professor at the Center for Atmospheric Ocean Science at New York University, whereafter he was a visiting professor at the Center for Sea Level Change at New York University Abu Dhabi, UAE.

In 2002, he won the University of Copenhagen's Silver Medal for his Price Dissertation on hydrology.

After serving in the Danish army, Mernild completed a Bachelor of Science degree in high-latitude climatology and glaciology from the Department of Geology of the University of Copenhagen in 1999. In 2001, he completed a Master of Science degree in mid-latitude climatology and hydrology, also from the University of Copenhagen. Mernild obtained a PhD degree in high-latitude climatology, glaciology, and hydrology, in 2006. In June 2016, Mernild successfully defended his doctoral thesis, Water balance from mountain glacier scale to ice sheet scale with focus on Mittvakkat Glacier, Southeast Greenland and the Greenland Ice Sheet and thereby obtained a Doctor of Science degree from the Faculty of Science (University of Copenhagen).

Jacob Sebastian Haugaard Mernild (born 20 October 1972) is a Danish professor in climate change, glaciology and hydrology, who is the pro-vice-chancellor of the University of Southern Denmark. Mernild has been an Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) author for the United Nations since 2010. Initially a contributing author on the IPCC Fifth Assessment Report, he was lead author on the IPCC Sixth Assessment Report.

Jacob Sebastian Haugaard Mernild was born in 1972 in Frederiksberg, Copenhagen, Denmark. He grew up in Hjallese, a suburb of Odense. Mernild graduated from Sct. Knuds Gymnasium [da] in 1993. He was admitted to the 'Teknikum' (College of Engineering), where he was to study engineering. Mernild soon dropped out, however, and instead became a captain in the Royal Danish Army, serving in Kosovo and the Afghan War.