11: Professor David Holland

David Holland is a renowned climate scientist who recently returned from the Thwaites Glacier in Antarctica. He works in close partnership with his wife, Denise Holland, who is his manager of field and logistics.

Fascinated by the Arctic since his childhood in Newfoundland and Labrador, he discusses what we know—and don’t yet know—about the warming of the oceans and its threat to humankind; his shuttling between teaching and research in urban centers and intensive fieldwork in some of the most beautiful and dangerous regions of the world; and the politicization of climate science as vast changes become more of a reality.

Holland is an esteemed global scientist—recently made a fellow of the American Geophysical Union—who has published over 100 peer-reviewed papers in the field of polar environmental science. At NYU, he is professor of mathematics and atmosphere/ocean science at the Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences; director of the Environmental Fluid Dynamics Laboratory in New York City; and director of the Center for Sea Level Change at NYU Abu Dhabi.