News

Dr. Roland Stull, a professor in the UBC Dept. of Earth, Ocean, and Atmospheric Sciences (EOAS), wins research support from the Canadian Safety and Security Program (CSSP), as announced 12 March 2013 by The Honourable Peter MacKay, Minister of National Defence. Collaborating with Natural Resources Canada, British Columbia's Ministry of Environment, and Parks Canada, Stull's research team will help enhance Canada's ability to predict and track smoke from forest fires and provide guidance to health agencies with regards to evacuation decisions.For the past six years, Stull's team has run the BlueSky wildfire smoke forecasts for western Canada, initially supported by the BC Ministry of Environment, and more recently with support from all the western provinces. (See http://www.bcairquality.ca/bluesky/ andfor more on other projects funded by CSSP)

On Nov 16th the official opening of our long-awaited Earth Sciences Building happened. We gathered to celebrate the hard work that has been done by so many people and the synergies that will certainly come from bringing diverse groups of faculty, staff and students together in this beautiful new teaching and research facility, designed to foster interaction and collaboration.

Work of EOAS graduate student Yiming Luo and seven colleagues, including Professors R. Francois and S. Allen, appeared on the Nature Geoscience website this week. They constrain the magnitude of Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation during the last glacial maximum. Circulation depth has been known for many years to be shallower than today, but it has been much harder to estimate the volume flux of water circulating. Using isotope data and a model created by Yiming, it has now been shown that volume flux during the last glacial maximum must have been larger than it is now.

The museum website has been given a facelift in anticipation of renovations happening in the museum. The new site is much easier to navigate, more colourfuland conforms to the latest UBC look and feel.

The museum and giftshop are currently closed for renovations, which are expected to be completed by Nov-Dec. The result will give the Pacific Museum of the Earth a modern feel, more in line with the state of the art new Earth Sciences Building now open next door. Thank you for your patience while we improve this facility.

NASA have approved funding for the InSight Mars Lander mission, which will gather seismic data from the Red Planet.Professor Catherine Johnson serves as Co-Investigator on the Science team.