Sabrina SPEICH

Full Professor
Physical Oceanography and Climate Sciences


Ecole Normale Supérieure

Department of Geosciences

Laboratoire de Météorologie Dynamique

UMR 8539, IPSL

24 rue Lhomond

75231 Paris Cedex 05 – France


Phone: +33 1 44 32 22 48

Email: sabrina.speich@lmd.ens.fr

Sabrina is a physical oceanographer with three decades of experience in modeling and conceiving large international observing projects to better assess ocean and climate processes and monitor changes. The approach she favored during the last 15 years is to promote interdisciplinary studies to understand the ocean nonlinear dynamics and its impact on biogeochemistry, marine biome and ecosystems and the atmosphere. She is also working together with the international community (within projects and organizations) to improve the ocean observing strategy and capacity. Indeed, the ocean is key to the future of humanity challenged by a rapidly changing climate.


She is full professor of Oceanography and Climate Sciences at the École Normale Supérieure (ENS) of Paris and I am member of the Laboratoire de Météorologie Dynamique (LMD) and the French climate Institute Pierre-Simon Laplace (IPSL).


Sabrina is actively participating, since the early 2000s in national and international organizations and programmes. Her actual involvement in this framework is motivated by developing a fit-for-purpose global climate observing system. This materializes by co-chairing the Ocean Observations Panel for Climate (OOPC which is a panel under GOOS , GCOS  and WCRP  programs sponsored by the United Nations and the World Meteorological Organization ). She is also co-chairing the UN Decade of Ocean Sciences programme: Ocean Observing Co-Design .


Sabrina is also a member of the Scientific Steering Group developing the new Earth System Modelling and Observations  core project of WCRP. In the past, she has been a member of the Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research (SCAR) and the co-chair of the Atlantic CLIVAR (Climate Variability and Predictability ) Regional Panel, which facilitates global climate research in the atmosphere and ocean with a focus on the Atlantic and pan-European regions. She has co-chaired the Tropical Atlantic Observing System (TAOS) Review Report released in 2020 by CLIVAR.


In 2019, Prof. Speich received the Albert Defant Medal.

Twitter @SabOceano

©Thomas BLANKE 2018