Elizabeth R. Thomas

Dr. Elizabeth R. Thomas is a leading paleoclimatologist at the British Antarctic Survey, head of the Ice Core Research team and the National Capability for Ice Core Acquisition and Analysis. She has led groundbreaking expeditions to drill the first sub-Antarctic ice cores (Balleny Islands, Peter 1st Island, Bouvet Island) and Antarctic deep ice cores.

• Principal Investigator for multiple NERC and Leverhulme grants (2018-2027)
• International collaborations with universities in Leeds, UCL, Cambridge, and St Andrews
• Contributor to IPCC AR6 climate projections

Research Focus: Polar climate variability through ice core proxies (temperature, sea ice, westerly winds) over 2000 years. Key contributions include documenting 20th century snow accumulation that offset sea-level rise by ~10mm, and sea ice proxy reconstructions exceeding internal climate variability.

Publications span Antarctic climate dynamics, including regional snow accumulation analysis and Holocene ice loss studies. Recent work integrates ice core chemistry with satellite firn observations.

• 2025 Science Bulletin: Antarctic oldest ice core analysis
• 2024 PNAS: Biomass burning reconstruction
• 2023 Earth System Science Data: Antarctic sodium/sulfate database

Awards include the 2014 BAS Laws Prize, 2018 SCAR Weyprecht Lecture, and 2019 National Geographic Explorer recognition.

Outreach: TED talks, BBC documentaries (Ice Age: The Apocalypse), and educational programs for Key Stage 2 children. She co-led the Sub-ICE expedition to preserve climate archives from remote islands.