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Annie Borch is a PhD student in volcanology, currently working with Dr. Kelly Russell at the University of British Columbia’s Department of Earth, Ocean and Atmospheric Sciences. She is interested in how volcanic eruptions can affect landscape evolution, and, in turn, how paleoenvironmental conditions such as glaciation impact volcanic eruption styles. Her current research focuses on understanding the volcanic history of extensive Quaternary basalt lava flows in the Whistler, BC area, and how they can be used to reconstruct paleovalley systems prior to and after the Fraser Glaciation. Before joining UBC, Annie completed a Bachelor of Arts and Sciences at Quest University Canada, and a Geographic Information Systems program at BCIT. She also worked in the exploration industry as a field geologist, and as a science writer and illustrator for the Sea to Sky Fire & Ice Aspiring Geopark in Whistler, BC. She has a passion for communicating science and is fascinated by how people understand and interact with the dynamic landscapes that surround them.

Pablo is a geoscientist with B.Sc. (from the University of Vale do Rio dos Sinos) and M.Sc. (from the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro) degrees in Geology, and a Ph.D. degree in Geological Sciences from the University of British Columbia. He has worked in Brazil, the United States and Canada. In his early career he worked on subsurface geological mapping using seismic data, and estimation of rock petrophysical properties from core and borehole log measurements. During his Ph.D., Pablo researched the textural, geochemical and petrophysical properties of mudstones in the Western Canada Sedimentary Basin, as well the reconstruction of thermal maturation history in the basin. He is currently a Postdoctoral Fellow and a sessional lecturer at the University of British Columbia.

AGU (American Geophysical Union) Fall Meeting is the most influential event in the world dedicated to the advancement of Earth and space sciences. Every year, AGU Fall Meeting convenes >25,000 attendees from 100+ countries to share research and network. Researchers, scientists, educators, students, policymakers, enthusiasts, journalists and communicators attend AGU Fall Meeting to better understand our planet and environment, and our role in preserving its future. It is a results-oriented gathering rooted in celebrating and advancing positive individual and collective outcomes. This year, #AGU21 will be held at the New Orleans Ernest N. Morial Convention Center and available online from 13-17 December.

The Department of Earth, Ocean and Atmospheric Sciences (EOAS) has been playing an active role at AGU. We'd like to inventory the presentations involving EOAS at AGU this year. Please find the schedule below for time, authors, presentation titles and links. 

Monday, 13 December 2021

Tuesday, 14 December 2021

Wednesday, 15 December 2021

Thursday, 16 December 2021

Friday, 17 December 2021

Jasmine Chase is a master’s student in geochemistry, currently working with Dr. Dominique Weis at the University of British Columbia’s Department of Earth, Ocean and Atmospheric Science. Originally from Ottawa, Ontario, she started her move westward with Alberta where she completed her undergraduate degree in Geology at the University of Calgary in 2020. Living close to the mountains and the prairies she developed a love for ancient ocean sediments and a fascination for how they’ve ended up today at the top of the Rockies. Now in British Columbia, her work has shifted to focus on modern oceans, specifically: applying geochemical metal analyses to fish from the nearby Pacific Ocean, in collaboration with the UBC Institute of Oceans and Fisheries, to learn about metal sources in the environment. Beyond just her own research, Jasmine is a keen supporter of interdisciplinary cooperation and breaking down stereotypes about the Earth Sciences that keep people from the discipline.

EOAS faculty members Brett Gilley and Dr. Rachel White have been valuable contacts for national and global news outlets reporting on the damage wreaked by the record-breaking BC rainfall last week.

Last week's storm, following on the heels of multiple sustained heavy rainfalls in early November, was delivered by an atmospheric river – a long strip of moisture that rapidly transports water from warmer areas towards the poles. BC has experienced an unusual amount of atmospheric river events this season, as Dr. White, a researcher of large-scale atmospheric dynamics, explains in an interview with CTV News. In other interviews with the BBC and The New York Times, she stresses that global warming has made atmospheric rivers, and the natural disasters they cause, more and more common. "As we warm up the atmosphere, as we warm up the oceans - more water is evaporated…essentially the atmosphere can carry more water towards our mountains."

This water – delivering the equivalent of the region’s monthly rainfall in just over 24 hours – caused flooding and landslides that sent the British Columbia government into a state of emergency.

As Associate Professor and natural disaster specialist Brett Gilley explained to Global News during a recent interview, other fallouts of global warming have a compounding effect on landslides triggered by the rainfall. BC’s heavy forest fire season weakened soil, while this past summer’s intense heat dome weakened tree roots that play a crucial role in slope stability. Already a landslide-prone province due to its mountainous nature, huge volumes of precipitation sent many of these compromised slopes crashing down onto BC’s highways and bridges.

CKNW’s Jas Johal interviewed Gilley on how to protect infrastructure from future landslides – often a balancing act of targeting problematic areas using limited resources. As he describes to the Vancouver Sun, applying these protective measures can be complicated by matters of funding and policy. Despite this, he sees replacing buried roads and washed-away bridges as an opportunity to build infrastructure better equipped for a future where a changing climate will make natural disasters more common.  

Mark Jellinek, Adrian Lenardic and Raymond T. Pierrehumbert

One of the most astonishing chapters in Earth’s history is “Snowball Earth”: The twice entombing of the whole planet beneath a kilometer-thick layer of ice for tens of millions of years. More improbable still is that the end of the last episode around 635 million years ago somehow helped to spark the rise of the diversity of complex animals and land plants along with the high atmospheric oxygen levels that define the modern world. Surprises were not, however, limited to the biosphere. Through the snowball episodes, Earth’s average global climate switched sharply in character from a relatively warm and ice-free world of the previous billion years (the boring billion) to one akin to present day, marked by glacial cycles, dynamic ice sheets and profound climate variability of varying intensity over time scales ranging from years to millions of years. How did Earth’s climate become so cold after being warm for so long? Why did consequent global glaciations persist for tens of millions of years and why were there two episodes? What triggered snowball Earth in the first place and how did Earth eventually escape this climatic death sentence? Why is Earth’s current climate so nervous—so sensitive to, for example, anthropogenic sources of CO2. In work that develops a new view of the dynamics of “the Earth System”, we show how effects of plate tectonics on Earth’s mantle convective stirring, including the intermittent formation and fragmentation of supercontinents, modulates the major volcanic and weathering controls on Earth’s average climate, setting the stage for protracted periods of warmth, for variability akin to present day and for snowball Earth.