Sophie CoulsonAssistant Senior Instructional Professor

Research Focus:

Sea level change, cryosphere, geodynamics

Email:

slcoulson@uchicago.edu

Office:

Hinds 533

Biography

Preferred Pronouns: she/her/hers

I am the Director of the M.S. Program in Environmental Sciences in the Department of Geophysical Sciences. My research focuses on the interactions between geodynamics, surface processes and sea level across a wide range of timescales. I use theory, numerical modeling, and geodetic and geologic observations to evaluate the impacts of solid-Earth deformation and gravity perturbations on topography, sea-level change and ice sheet evolution. The main motivations of this work are to better understand natural variability in climate and sea level through Earth’s past and provide insight into future change in a warming climate. Before joining the University of Chicago, I was an Assistant Professor of Geophysics at the University of New Hampshire and a Director's Postdoctoral Fellow at Los Alamos National Laboratory. I received my Ph.D. in Earth and Planetary Sciences from Harvard University.

Selected Publications

• Coulson, S., Lloyd, A., Bao, X., Mitrovica, J.X., Dangendorf, S., Pan, L., Valencic, N., Tamisiea, M.E., Al-Attar, D. and Heathcotte, D., 2026. Inverting sea surface height data yields Greenland ice mass changes (1993–2019): a proof of concept. Geophysical Journal International, 246(2), p.ggag187. https://doi.org/10.1093/gji/ggag187
• Ertel, G., Coulson, S., Piecuch, C.G. and Hoffman, M., 2026. Crustal deformation and gravitational effects from dynamic ocean mass redistribution impact projected sea‐level change. Geophysical Research Letters, 53(11), p.e2026GL122243. https://doi.org/10.1029/2026GL122243
• Coulson, S. and Leary, R.J., 2026. Continental levering explains up to~ 30% variation in magnitude of Pennsylvanian sea-level cycles recorded in cyclic stratigraphy. Geology, 54(6), pp.598-602. https://doi.org/10.1130/G54320.1
• Coulson, S., Dangendorf, S., Mitrovica, J.X., Tamisiea, M.E., Pan, L. and Sandwell, D.T., 2022. A detection of the sea level fingerprint of Greenland Ice Sheet melt. Science, 377(6614), pp.1550-1554. https://www.science.org/doi/full/10.1126/science.abo0926
• Coulson, S., Lubeck, M., Mitrovica, J.X., Powell, E., Davis, J.L. and Hoggard, M.J., 2021. The Global Fingerprint of Modern Ice‐Mass Loss on 3‐D Crustal Motion. Geophysical Research Letters, 48(16), p.e2021GL095477. https://doi.org/10.1029/2021GL095477