Department of the GeoPhysical Sciences

Geophysical Science News

• UChicago Prof. Tiffany Shaw: How piloting planes helped lead to climate science research

  May 16, 2023

  When she was just 16 years old, she got her pilot’s license. She did not realize then that having her head in the clouds was exactly where she would be in the future—predicting Earth’s future climate by studying the atmosphere and using the laws of physics. 

  As a professor at UChicago, Shaw’s research focuses on the physics of climate change. Her work involves a multi-pronged approach. She develops new theories for the response to climate change, models future climate using the laws of physics and quantifies emerging signals in observations related to climate change. 

  A major focus has been uncovering the role water plays in shaping atmospheric motions like the jet stream and storms that shape our day-to-day weather. Using this new perspective, her recent work explained for the first time why the Southern Hemisphere is stormier than the Northern Hemisphere.

  Click here for the full UChicago News report

• UChicago’s David Jablonski and Team Shares Insights on New Rock-Boring Bivalve Study

  May 16, 2023

  This paper is one of the first major studies done using three-dimensional images of bivalve shells. The Maroon sat down with scientists Katie S. Collins, Stewart M. Edie, and David Jablonski to talk more about their research and findings.

  Jablonski credits the success of the paper to his partnership with Collins and Edie. “It has been a blast working with them,” Jablonski said. “They’re wonderful, wonderful colleagues—ridiculously smart […] It’s been this really fruitful, mutually reinforcing, and complementary kind of collaboration that has been really rewarding...Our team also includes some great undergraduates.”

  “[Bivalves] are common, they have a long fossil record, their morphology is super informative, they’re understudied because they’re kind of difficult, and they give you all this data about the evolution of ecosystems through time." Collins said.

  Great write up for the Chicago Maroon by undergrad Jenna Moor!

• David Keith, who leads a new climate-systems-engineering initiative at UChicago, mentioned in New Yorker piece regarding S.R.M. and stratospheric aerosols use in protecting Arctic ice

  May 09, 2023

  Professor Keith researches stratospheric aerosol injection—a type of solar-radiation management, or S.R.M., that would raise the planet’s albedo by spraying reflective aerosols into the stratosphere, much as volcanoes do. 

  The New Yorker reports Keith as saying that, in his view, research into the safety and efficacy of glass microspheres is underwhelming, and that stratospheric aerosols are a more mature and impactful technology. But supporters of using glass microspheres as a reflective coating for ice sheets argue that their approaches would be preferable because they are localized, and might be more easily reversed. 

  Read the article "A Heat Shield for the Most Important Ice on Earth" for more info regarding saving Arctic ice.

• Susana Aurora Magallón Puebla, PhD ‘99, Elected To The National Academy of Sciences

  May 03, 2023

  PhD alumna Susana Aurora Magallón Puebla (PhD 1999) has been elected as an international member of the National Academy of Sciences. Susana is a world leader in determining the age and diversification of flowering plants, and hence the origin of modern plant diversity and ecosystems. Her dissertation topic was "A neontological and paleontological approach to the evolution of floral form among basal eudicots (angiosperms)." She is currently the Director of the Institute of Biology at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México. Election to the National Academy is done on the basis of distinguished and continuing achievements in original research, and is one of the highest honors in science. Congratulations, Susana!