Rachel H. White

Rachel H. White

Assistant Professor, Department of Earth, Ocean and Atmospheric Sciences

Rachel leads the UBC Climate Dynamics group here at UBC. Her research interests are based in large-scale atmospheric dynamics, and currently she is most interested in understanding the connections between atmospheric circulation and extreme weather events and how we can use these connections to provide better predictions of extreme weather events and to better understand how anthropogenic climate change will affect weather extremes. She runs and analyzes results from climate models, and analyzes data from atmospheric observations to explore a wide variety of questions about our climate, from: How accurately can we predict the probability of summer heat waves weeks to months in advance? to: What differences would we see in atmospheric circulation patterns if the Earth rotated backwards? For more information, including her plans to combine climate outreach with aerial circus, click here.

Email: rwhite at eoas dot ubc dot ca
CV
Google Scholar
UBC EOAS Profile

Marlen Kolbe

Postdoctoral Researcher

Marlen is a postdoctoral researcher at UBC with a background in polar meteorology and moisture transport. In collaboration with the Canadian Centre for Climate Modelling and Analysis (CCCma) in Victoria, she is working on a project examining atmospheric dynamics as well as temperature and hydrological extremes in bias-corrected simulations from the Canadian Earth System Model (CanESM).

Email: mkolbe at eoas dot ubc dot ca

Lynn Engel

PhD student

Lynn is a third-year PhD student in Atmospheric Science at UBC. She is co-supervised by Dr. Roland Stull and Dr. Rachel White and you can find her on campus at the Weather Forecast Research Team laboratory. Lynn's research Improving Winter Forecast Temperatures in the Peace Region of Alberta and British Columbia, funded by BC Hydro and MITACS, is crucial for enhancing extreme winter temperature forecasts in the region. Improving winter temperature forecasting is vital to BC Hydro for several reasons: first, to ensure the safety of residents in the town of Peace River, Alberta, where ice jamming and flooding hazards occur on the Peace River; and second, to optimize hydroelectric power generation by better managing water resources. However, accurate forecasts in this region are challenging due to Arctic air masses, downslope windstorms, and complex terrain. Using the Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) model, her work enhances mesoscale weather prediction, with a focus on cold-air damming and Chinook events.

To address the scarcity of weather observations, particularly in the vertical domain, Lynn initiated and led a winter fieldwork campaign, launching radiosonde balloons multiple times daily in varying air masses, and ice conditions along the Peace River.

Lynn has been a registered geoscience professional for over 20 years and previously worked as a geophysicist in the Canadian Oil and Gas industry. Her technical background includes seismic interpretation of complex geology worldwide, utilizing advanced techniques such as seismic inversion, machine learning, and 3D visualization for subsurface analysis. She also has experience in risk analysis, investment, and asset management.

Lynn holds a B.Sc. in Applied Physics/Geophysics from the University of Waterloo. She transitioned to graduate studies and completed her M.Sc. in Geosciences with a specialization in Applied Meteorology from Mississippi State University in August 2023.

Read more about Lynn and her research here. For inquiries, she can be reached via email or LinkedIn.
Email: lengel at eoas dot ubc dot ca
UBC EOAS Profile
LinkedIn

Ted Scott

PhD student

Ted is a third-year PhD student in Geography at UBC. His current research focuses on quantifying the changing experience of the summer season globally, regionally, and across different land surface types as the climate warms. He is co-supervised by Dr. Simon Donner in the UBC Department of Geography. Read more about Ted and his research here.

Email: tedjs at student dot ubc dot ca
UBC Geography Profile

Taylor Swift-LaPointe

PhD student

Taylor is a second-year PhD student in Atmospheric Science at UBC. Her research focuses on spring and early-season heatwaves. She is currently investigating the seasonality of heatwave amplitude and the factors that influence temperature in different seasons, as well as the atmospheric circulation patterns that lead to heatwaves and how these change from winter to spring to summer. Taylor completed an MSc in Atmospheric Science with Dr. White in 2024, where she worked on seasonal forecasting of streamflow in the Columbia River basin using a hybrid statistical-dynamical forecast with Long Short-Term Memory neural networks. Prior to this, she graduated with a BSc in Honours Physics in 2021. Read more about Taylor and her research here.

Email: tswiftlapointe at eoas dot ubc dot ca
UBC EOAS Profile
Google Scholar

Jeremy Chung

MSc student

Jeremy is a second-year course-based MSc student in Atmospheric Science at UBC. His research project focuses on visualizations of heat vulnerability in Vancouver to better understand what the spatial patterns are. Jeremy also has a strong interest in science communication and is the course coordinator for EOSC 111, a laboratory course that explores various topics in earth sciences at UBC. Read more about Jeremy and his work here.

Email: jchung at eoas dot ubc dot ca
UBC EOAS Profile

Jamie Robson

Undergraduate student

Jamie is a fourth-year honours geophysics student who has been working in the Climate Dynamics Group since 2023. Her honours project aims to study the dynamical components of temperatures, in order to determine if there is a link between regions of high dynamical trend, and regions of high surface temperature trend. This project will consider three periods of the CESM2 model to investigate whether large dynamical trends can be found in simulations with no temperature trend. She has previously studied the effect of solar radiation and timing on the Western North American Heatwave of 2021 which she hopes to publish in the near future.

Email: jrobso01 at student dot ubc dot ca