UCI loses top climate expert to Germany

The Orange County Register

September 25th, 2008,

By Gary Robbins

Sue Trumbore, a widely-respected global warming expert who played a pivotal role in making UC Irvine a leader in the study of Earth’s changing climate, is leaving the university to take a top research post in Germany.

“I will be taking a leave of absence to work at the Max Planck Institute for Biogeochemistry in Jena — but not until October 2009,” said Trumbore, chair of the Department of Earth System Science, which is ranked among the top 25 programs of its kind worldwide.

“The leave means I can continue working with UCI, especially maintaining some of my ongoing projects and collaborations with the Keck AMS facility (a particle accelerator). The opportunity to be a Max Planck Director is a tremendous one, and pretty much the only thing that would get me to think of leaving UCI. Earth System Science is very near and dear to my heart and I hope to forge some strong links between the two institutes.”

Professors can return to a campus from such leaves, but they rarely do in this kind of situation.

Trumbore, a geochemist, joined UCI in 1991, shortly after famed climate researcher Ralph Cicerone founded the program that became earth system science. She quickly built an international reputation for her studies of how carbon moves between the ground, plants, atmosphere and oceans. Such work is a fundamental part of understanding climate change, and her studies led to her election to the American Association for the Advancement of Science, one of the world’s most prestigious scientific organizations.

She also helped UCI obtain $ 2 million for an accelerator that’s used by many scientists to study carbon dioxide, a key greeenhouse gas. Trumbore uses the accelerator in her own work, which involves field research from the Amazon to forested areas in Massachusetts. More recently, she helped recruit five scientists who specialize in abrupt climate change, including Eric Rignot, one of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory’s top experts on how climate change affects glaciers.

“While the loss of Sue as a full-time professor at UCI will be a blow to the campus, the new interactions with the institute she will be directing in Germany will have many positive benefits for UCI,” said John Hemminger, dean of Irvine’s School of Physical Sciences.