Sonam Futi Sherpa
She/Her/Hers
Postdoctoral Research Associate
Institute at Brown for Environment and Society (IBES), Brown University
Department of Earth, Environmental & Planetary Sciences (DEEPS), Brown University
I am a Postdoctoral Research Associate in the Northern Change Research Laboratory (NCRL) and 2023 National Science Foundation (NSF) Earth Sciences Postdoctoral fellow at Brown University. My research interest is in utilizing novel remote sensing (radar and others) to observe Earth from space. At Brown, I am using NASA/CNES/CSA SWOT (Surface Water and Ocean Topography) satellite missions to observe water and the proglacial environment.
Prior to Brown, I obtained my Ph.D. from the Department of Geosciences, Virginia Tech in the Spring of 2023 with a specialization in Radar Remote Sensing for Earth observation and was part of the Earth Observation and Innovation (EOI) Lab, where I focused my research on large-scale water mapping, sea level rise, and exposure utilizing remotely sensed big data from Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR), Interferometric SAR (InSAR) and machine learning. Additionally, I worked on Gravity data (GRACE/FO) to understand the association between changes in glacier mass and climate seasonality in High Mountain Asia and was also part of the Hydrologic Innovation & Remote Sensing (HIR) Lab.
At VT, I was NSF’s VT DRRM (Disaster Risk Resilience and Management) Fellow (2020-2023) and IPCC’s (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) Climate Sciences Fellow (2021-2023).
Latest News
March, 2024 Our Nature paper "Disappearing cities on US coasts" is out. Check out our open-access paper here.
Dec. 2023 I am at AGU. I presented my research on the SWOT mission and 3D Remote Sensing of Water.
Nov. 2023 I am featured in Brown Daily and read about me at the Institute at Brown for Environment and Society Feature.
Oct. 23 2023 I gave a talk at the Climate and Environment Lunch Bunch of Brown University.
Sept., 2023 I am at the SWOT Science Team Meeting in Toulouse, France! I presented a poster on Cal/Val of SWOT and compared Hydrological in-situ data and 1-day fast sampling orbit SWOT data.
July, 2023 I am thrilled to receive the 2023 National Science Foundation (NSF) Earth Sciences Postdoctoral fellowship.
June, 2023 I am excited to join Northern Change Research Laboratory, as a Postdoctoral Research Associate at Brown University. I will be working on a NASA/CNES/CSA SWOT satellite mission to observe water and the proglacial environment.
April, 2023 Our research/JGR paper is featured in Virginia Tech News. See Virginia Tech press release of our recent paper.
March, 2023 Our paper that assesses the impact of climate change and vertical land motion in sea level rise is published in the Journal of Geophysical Research (JGR). See our open-access paper for more details.
Selected Publications
Sherpa, S. F., Shirzaei, M., & Ojha, C. (2023). Disruptive Role of Vertical Land Motion in Future Assessments of Climate Change-Driven Sea Level Rise and Coastal Flooding Hazards in the Chesapeake Bay, Journal of Geophysical Research, https://doi.org/10.1029/2022JB025993.
Sherpa, S.F., & Shirzaei, M., (2021). Earth-observing Radar Satellite Data for Semi-Real Time Flood Exposure Analysis. Case Study of Iran 2019 Flood, Journal of Flood Risk Management, https://doi.org/10.1111/jfr3.12770.
Sherpa, S. F., Shirzaei, M., Ojha, C. Werth, S. and Hostache, R. (2020) “Probabilistic Mapping of August 2018 Flood of Kerala, India, Using Space-Borne Synthetic Aperture Radar," in IEEE Journal of Selected Topics in Applied Earth Observations and Remote Sensing, vol. 13, pp. 896-913. doi: 10.1109/JSTARS.2020.2970337
Sherpa, S. F., Shrestha, M., Eakin, H., & Boone, C. G. (2019). Cryospheric hazards and risk perceptions in the Sagarmatha (Mt. Everest) National Park and Buffer Zone, Nepal. Natural Hazards, 1-20. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11069-018-3560-0
Sherpa, S. F., Wagnon, P., Brun, F., Bertheir, E., Vincent, C., Lejeune, Y., Arnaud Y., Kayastha, R.B., Sinisalo, A. (2017). Contrasted surface mass balances of debris-free glaciers observed between the southern and the inner parts of the Everest region (2007–15). Journal of Glaciology, 1-15. doi:10.1017/jog.2017.30