Edward Hanna

Edward Hanna is Professor of Climate Science and Meteorology in the College of Science. He is current lead PI of 3 multi-institute NERC grants, and Lincoln PI of a further NERC grant, with a combined value ~£2.5 million. He serves as Co-Chair of the World Climate Research Programme Climate & Cryosphere (WCRP CliC) project's Scientific Steering Group, and is the WCRP representative on the Ice Sheet Mass Balance and Sea Level (ISMASS) expert group.

Edward received a BSc in Planetary Science (First Class Honours) from University College London in 1995 and completed a PhD in Satellite Remote Sensing of Antarctic Sea Ice and Climatic Couplings at the University of Bristol in 1998. This was followed by postdoctoral research in the Department of Meteorology, University of Reading between 1998 and 2000 before being appointed as Lecturer in Meteorology at the Institute of Marine Studies, University of Plymouth in 2000. In 2003 Edward was appointed as Lecturer in Climate Change at the Department of Geography, University of Sheffield, promoted to Senior Lecturer in 2006, Reader in 2010 and was awarded a personal chair in 2013, serving as Deputy Head of Department 2013-16.

Edward has published >140 research papers in international peer-reviewed journals, including 5 papers in Nature (1 as lead author), 2 in Nature Climate Change, 2 in Nature Communications, 1 in Nature Reviews Earth & Environment as lead author, and 1 in Science. Together his papers have attracted >16,900 citations (H index 61) according to Google Scholar. He was listed in the top 2% of most cited scientists in his research field in a 2020 Stanford University survey. He has led an international team to reconstruct Greenland Ice Sheet surface mass balance, the results of which have been used by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, on which he was a Contributing Author on their Fifth Assessment Report. He has also contributed as an author to many Arctic Report Cards of the US National Oceanographic & Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). Another key research interest is investigating possible links between Arctic Amplification of global warming and the occurrence of extreme weather in the Northern Hemisphere mid-latitudes. Hanna is a founding member of an international working group on Arctic climate change-mid latitude extreme linkages, led by Dr. James E. Overland of NOAA. As part of his climatological research Edward has developed the concept of the Greenland Blocking Index related to North Atlantic polar jet stream changes, as a key driver of the recently increased Greenland ice melt. Active collaborations include with the Met Office, several other European meteorological institutes, and NOAA.

Edward is a regular organiser of or invited participant in international workshops and conferences, and has given multiple invited lectures in Denmark, Germany, Greenland, Iceland, Norway and the USA. He lead-organised ISMASS international research workshops on ice-sheet mass balance and climate change in Davos, Switzerland, in June 2018, and Reykjavik, Iceland, in August 2022, and co-organised an international research workshop on Arctic-midlatitude climate linkages in Lincoln in Sept. 2023. He also co-led the "Moana Water of Life: Navigating Climate Change for Planetary Health" international conference in Lincoln in Aug/Sep 2019.

Edward is a Fellow of the Royal Meteorological Society and a member of the Climatological Observers Link and maintains a weather station at Newark.