Earth System Science

Greenland is losing ice mass seven times faster than in the 1990s, a pace that matches the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s high-end warming scenario – in which 400 million people would be exposed to coastal flooding by 2100, 40 million more than in the mid-range prediction.

Eight new faculty members join the School of Physical Sciences from universities across the world, bringing new research right from their Ph.D. programs and others bringing their established research ready to revamp. Here are the new faculty members:

California’s 2018 wildfire season was the deadliest and most destructive ever recorded: At least 100 people were killed, more than 24,000 structures were consumed and nearly 2 million acres were burned, according to the California Department of Forestry & Fire Protection.

A new study shows that the deepest point on land is under the Denman Glacier in East Antarctica. Glaciologists at the University of California, Irvine, were mapping the area only to find that the trough under the glacier went far deeper than they had imagined.

Irvine, Calif., Dec. 12, 2019 – A University of California, Irvine-led team of glaciologists has unveiled the most accurate portrait yet of the contours of the land beneath Antarctica’s ice sheet – and, by doing so, has helped identify which regions of the continent are going to be more, or less, vulnerable to future climate warming.

Global Environmental Change: Causes, Impacts, Solutions. The Department of Earth System Science (ESS) at the University of California, Irvine, focuses on how the atmosphere, land, and oceans interact as a system, and how the Earth will change over a human lifetime. With global change projected to accelerate through the 21st century, ESS has made a commitment to study the causes and impacts of climate change and more importantly the solutions. With top experts in fields ranging from atmospheric…

Irvine, Calif., Nov. 26, 2019 — Nine University of California, Irvine researchers in areas ranging from neurodevelopment and chemical synthesis to labor economics and library sciences have been named fellows of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the world’s largest general scientific society.

Professors Steven Allison, James Bullock, Steven Davis, James Randerson, Eric Rignot, Isabella Velicogna and Jasper Vrugt have been named to the Highly Cited Researchers 2019 global list.

Irvine, Calif., Oct. 21, 2019 – The next time a river overflows its banks, don’t just blame the rain clouds. Earth system scientists from the University of California, Irvine have identified another culprit: leafy plants.

It’s kind of like predicting whether a social media post will go viral. Only in this case, the stakes could be much higher. A team of researchers at UC Irvine says it has developed a machine learning model based on a “decision tree” algorithm that — if given information on climate data, atmospheric conditions and the types of vegetation present — can help determine the final size of a wildfire, starting from the moment of ignition.

Irvine, Calif., Oct. 9, 2019 — Researchers at the University of California, Irvine are leading a new project with three other UC campuses to study the impact of coastal flooding on disadvantaged communities in California.

A new technique can predict the final size of wildfires from the moment of ignition, researchers report.