Meet Anaïs Orsi - Climate Scientist

September 29, 2021

Anaïs Orsi is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Earth, Ocean and Atmospheric Sciences (EOAS) at UBC. Her research focuses on polar climate variability using tracers found in ice cores. Today, the Arctic is the region that is warming the fastest on Earth. Anais’s work is to provide context to the current trend by reconstructing the climate of the recent past (several thousand years) using indicators found in ice cores. These indicators can be the thickness of an annual layer of snow, the presence of an ice lens indicating melting, the isotopic composition of the water that snow is composed of, or simply the temperature inside the ice sheet. All of these indicators give a complementary information of what the past climate might have looked like, and help put the recent trends in context. This work has led her to repeatedly visit polar regions, in Greenland and Antarctica, in the search for clues of past climates.

Prior to joining UBC, Anaïs completed her PhD at the University of California San Diego, and subsequently worked as a research scientist at the LSCE (Climate and Environmental Science Laboratory) in France. Her work has been distinguished by several prizes, including the International Rising Talent of the L’Oreal-UNESCO foundation for women in Science.