UCLA Atmospheric & Oceanic Sciences

AOS Announces New Climate Science Major

	AOS Associate Professor Aradhna Tripati Confirms Study Showing Glaciers on Greenland over 35 Million Years Ago When AOS Associate Professor Aradhna Tripati first authoried her study suggesting ice had been present in Greenland 35-40 million years ago, it flew against the commonly held belief that glaciers first appeared 5-11 million years. The study which was published in 2005 in the journal Nature Communications, was considered controversial. Why had Tripati come with these findings, and similar observations were not found by other studies? Her paper was regarded as an outlier rather than a breakthrough in climate science and geology. Tripati had confidence in her findings and in 2014 worked with Dennis Darby, an Arctic paleoclimate specialist at Old Dominion University, using new samples taken from broken off from Greenland Sea icbergs from glaciers of the island. Using the new samples corroborated the original study that Tripati had found and the pair published the new findings this year on Nature. For more in-depth story please go to: http://newsroom.ucla.edu/stories/a-cold-case-on-greenlands-ice-sheets-wa...
	AOS Announces New Climate Science Major With climate change one of the most pressing issues facing the world, this new bachelor's degree program will provide the scientific training that empowers students to be part of the solution. Click here to learn more about this exciting new major. Click here to read UCLA's press release about how this new program strengthens the university's commitment to environmental sustainability, and here for the UCLA Bruin article announcing the program.
	AOS Professor Alex Hall to lead environmental bike expedition along California’s coast AOS Professor Alex Hall will embark on a 1,000-mile trek to educate, learn and engage with the public on climate change. This July, UCLA is partnering with the nonprofit organization OnePulse for the California Climate Expedition, the three-week bike ride. Forty riders will get a chance to cruise 1,000 miles of California coastline and meet top environmental experts and locations affected by climate change — places like the San Francisco Bay delta, through which much of the state’s water resources flow, and Santa Barbara County, which was ravaged by the Thomas Fire and subsequent mudslides that killed 21. The ride will begin in Arcata, California, about 90 miles south of the state’s border with Oregon, and follow the coast south to Los Angeles. Subject matter experts from government, nonprofit organizations and universities will join the ride to engage in dialogues about the effects of climate change, from concerns about water resources to effects on local ecosystems. Hall plans to talk about his own findings as well. In the process, riders will raise funds for the UCLA Center for Climate Science’s future research, which in turn will help the state prepare for future challenges.
	Professor Danielle Bianchi Awarded 2018 Sloan Research Fellowship AOS Assistant Professor Danielle Bianchi is among 126 scientists and scholars from 53 colleges and universities in the United States and Canada selected to receive a 2018 Sloan Research Fellowship. The Alfred P. Sloan Foundation selects early-career scientists and scholars who are rising stars. Professor Bianchi studies how physics, chemistry and biology come together to regulate ocean ecosystems, and seeks to learn in what direction they may change in the future. "The oceans are the Earth’s last wilderness," Bianchi said. Scientists have a deep appreciation of the oceans’ role on climate and the carbon cycle, and as enormous reservoirs of biodiversity, but the oceans are changing in ways we do not fully understand; these changes include warming, acidification, deoxygenation and overfishing. Bianchi’s research team is especially interested in the cycles of oxygen and nitrogen, the ecology of the deep ocean zone and the role of animals — from zooplankton to fish — in the marine ecosystem. His research tools range from global observations to theoretical and numerical models of ocean biogeochemistry and ecology. Bianchi and colleagues published a study in 2017 in the journal Nature Communications confirming that climate change poses a major threat for global fishery, and showing that technological progress in fishing technology could pose an even greater threat.
	Victor Pinto Wins AGU Outstanding Student Paper Award AOS Graduate Student Victor Pinto was for presenting his paper "Spatial characterization of relativistic electron enhancements in the Earth's outer radiation belt during the Van Allen Probes era" at the most recent AGU meeting. Typically only the top 2-5% of all presenters in each section are awarded by AGU with an Outstanding Student Paper Award. Congratulations Victor!

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