News From and About Earth System Science

In addition to frequent updates on facebook and twitter, ESS faculty, staff, grad students and alumni are often the subject of more in-depth stories.

  • Borrego Desert Club

    Former desert resort to become UC Irvine research center
    The Desert Club near Anza-Borrego Desert State Park is being donated to the school for the study of the desert ecosystem and the relationship between human development and the natural environment.

     

    May 12, 2011
  • Desert Research Center

    Press Release: Desert Club to become UCI field research station, thanks to generous gift
    Climate change, water supply and visitor use of parkland will be studied

    — Irvine, Calif., May 12, 2011 —

    A stunning and historic clubhouse at the doorstep of California’s largest state park will be turned into a long-sought UC Irvine field research center for biologists, astronomers, anthropologists and others, thanks to a generous gift from Audrey Steele Burnand, who has deep ties to the property and the small town in which it’s located.

    May 12, 2011
  • Desert Research Center - Map

    UCI to Open Desert Research Center

    A 1940s social club at the edge of Anza Borrego Desert State Park will become UC Irvine’s new desert research center, where scientists will investigate everything from climate change to the effects of human presence on the park’s plants and animals.

    May 12, 2011
  • Desert Research Center

    Historic Borrego home to become research center

    BORREGO SPRINGS — The historic Desert Club in Borrego Springs, once envisioned to be the centerpiece of a thriving desert city much like Palm Springs, will soon become a field research center for biologists, astronomers, anthropologists and others.

    May 12, 2011

  • There's good news for aspiring geoscientists. Job opportunities at all career stages are on the rise.

    May 11, 2011
  • Saltzman, Eric

    Eric Saltzman elected as a 2011 AGU Fellow

    Professor Eric Saltzman was elected to be a 2011 Fellow of the American Geophysical Union (AGU). "Being elected a Fellow of the AGU is a huge honor," agreed Saltzman, whose work focuses on trace gas effects on climate. "It's really a reflection of all the great work done by my students and postdocs over the years."

    Apr 29, 2011
  • Background Radiation

    More dangerous than Japan radiation

    West Coast inhabitants have learned by now that we live downwind from the crippled nuclear reactors in Fukushima, Japan. The plume of radioactive material poses a real threat near the source, where images include health workers wearing protective "moon suits," infants probed by Geiger counters, and contaminated smoke and steam spewing from the damaged reactor buildings. These emissions are carried our direction in the global wind belt called the prevailing westerlies.

    Apr 18, 2011
  • Radiation monitoring station in Anaheim

    EPA: West Coast radiation still very low

    Detectors on the West Coast that are part of a nationwide network continue picking up only trace levels of radioactive material from crippled reactors in Japan, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency said Friday.

    The levels remain 100,000 to a million times below any that would trigger health concerns, officials said.

    Mar 25, 2011
  • Winds blow mainly from west to east

    Trace radiation could reach West Coast

    Some simulations now show traces of radiation from Japan potentially reaching across the Pacific to the U.S. West Coast by Friday, but even if it did, the radiation amounts would be so tiny that they would represent no health threat, experts say.

    "Our six-day forward plume simulation shows most of it misses us," said Menas Kafatos, founding dean at Chapman's Schmid College of Science, whose research group generates wind and weather forecasts from satellite data.

    Mar 17, 2011

  • Ice sheets melting faster than earlier estimates

    The vast ice sheets of Greenland and Antarctica are melting faster than previously estimated and that melting is accelerating, according to a new report that verifies 18 years of melting via two independent techniques.

    Mar 11, 2011