Earth System Science talks will return in September 2021
Contact Address:
The Earth System Science Program
Earth & Planetary Sciences
[Unit Detail]
Frank Dawson Adams Building[Map],
3450 University Street,
Montreal, QC, Canada, H3A 0E8.
Tel: (514)-398-6767 | Fax: 514.398.4680
Pavlos Kollias (Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences). Radar meteorology, cloud physics, convective/stratoform precipitation, boundary layer structure and clouds, turbulence and micro-physics, atmospheric remote sensing, atmospheric radiation, cloud-aerosol interaction, and the hydrological cycle.
Bernhard Lehner (Geography). Global hydrology; my research focuses on large basin, continental and global-scale modeling of the terrestrial water cycle and analyzing the effects of climate change on water resources and hydrologic regimes, including floods and droughts. Hydrology and GIS; my research entails hydrologic simulation within a GIS environment, scale effects, and generation/evaluation of global data sets. Conservation hydrology; I am interested in large-scale environmental flow assessments and integrated freshwater conservation.
Jeffrey McKenzie (Earth and Planetary Sciences). Hydrogeology: Application of numerical modeling, hydrochemistry, and field methods to study northern peatlands and pro-glacial systems. The impact of climate change on hydrologic systems. Specific projects include studying the impact of glacial recession on water resources in the tropics, groundwater/ permafrost issues in arctic regions, simulating heat flux with freezing and porewater flow.
William Minarik (Earth and Planetary Sciences). I am interested in the progressive chemical change of the Earth's crust and mantle over Earth history. The major and trace element composition of rocks and their constituent minerals incompletely record the history of the processes that created them. Three interdependent approaches are necessary to solve the puzzle of this history: First, field investigation recovers the preserved pieces, and suggests the processes that are important in the Earth System. Bill has active field investigations in the Northeastern Superior craton (northern Quebec) and in the Appalachian mountains. Second, in the laboratory we can analyze the bulk composition of the rocks and the compositions of the constituent minerals down to the micron scale; these concentrations range from the tens of percent to parts per trillion (a range of 11 orders of magnitude). Laboratory investigations also document preserved textures and reaction histories; these help connect the pieces together. Third, experiments at high pressure and temperature can re-create the processes active within the Earth, and provide the link between mineral compositions and field observations. The framework for interpreting experimental evidence is theory: thermodynamics and kinetics.
Navin Ramankutty (Geography). My research interests lie in understanding the interactions between human land use activities, terrestrial ecosystem dynamics, and climate. In particular, I develop global data sets and numerical modeling tools to examine the consequences of land use/cover change for the global carbon cycle, hydrology, and climate. I am also interested in studying these interactions from the perspective of ecosystem goods & services, and in particular, the consequences for food production and fresh water resources. I am currently aiming to start some regional-scale work over South Asia on these topics.
Bruno Tremblay (Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences). I am interested in the high latitudes and their effect on global climate, and climate change. The idea of a summer ice-free Arctic (the Antarctic-analogue) is discussed more and more in the community. Important changes in the high latitude have already been observed. These include the melting of the permafrost, the warming of the eastern Arctic atmosphere, the reduction in ice extent and thinning of sea ice cover, the positive trend in Eurasian river runoff, etc. How will these changes impact the heat and fresh water budget of the Arctic? And the fresh water exchange between the Arctic and the northern North Atlantic where deep convection is present? Are these changes forced by local ocean-atmosphere interactions? Or are they forced remotely (e.g. by the warming of the tropical Indian and western Pacific Oceans) through tele-connection patterns? How will negative feedbacks associated (for instance) with the potential increase in summer cloud cover and fresh water flux to the northern North Atlantic affect the response of the high latitude to this warming? In a globally warmed world, we expect an increased hydrological cycle. Can we see trends in high latitude precipitation in the instrumental record? Is this trend coherent with the trend in river runoff? These are some of the questions that I am interested in tackling in the near future in my research.
Boswell Wing (Earth and Planetary Sciences). High-precision stable isotope geochemistry: Recovery of the geochemical memory of large-scale Earth system processes (e.g., microbial control of the global S cycle; anthropogenic manipulation of atmospheric OH abundances). Upcoming research will use high-precision measurements of total oxygen (16O, 17O, 18O) and sulfur (32S, 33S, 34S, 36S) stable isotope abundances to investigate microbial biogeochemistry under an anoxic Archean atmosphere, to constrain mass fluxes in the Phanerozoic geologic sulfur cycle, and to track processes that control the pollution-cleansing oxidants (OH, O3) in the modern atmosphere.
For research interests of other faculty please view individual pages of
McGill Professors in ESS
The International Geosphere-Biosphere Program (IGBP) publishes a newsletter quarterly on Global Change Research and is an excellent source of information on the types of Earth System Science being undertaken and the integrated approach which is employed. The Newsletters can be accessed here.