Michael Ghil Editor

Mario Chavez is a scientist at the Institute of Engineering in Mexico. He has served as a Secretary (1981-1983) and Vice President (1991-1993) of the Mexican Society for Earthquake Engineering AC, Network Director accelerograph and Seismological Research Institute for Engineering, Guadalajara, Mexico (1993-1998 ), and also as an External Adviser of the Secretary of Environment and Natural Resources of the Government of Mexico (2001-2003). He has published 30 articles in journals and 65 conferences, national and international, as well as 76 technical studies. He has directed 12 theses of Bachelor, Masters and 7 Doctoral. His research interests include seismic risk in urban and industrial environment, numerical modeling with supercomputer seismic waves propagation, and extreme events and their economic impact.

Michael Ghil is a distinguished research Professor of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) and the Director of the Institute of Geophysics and Planetary Physics at UCLA. He joined the Dynamic Meteorology Laboratory (Ecole Normale Supérieure (ENS)) in the year 2002 as a distinguished Professor of Geosciences. He is a highly cited author in the field of geosciences with his research focus on the physics of climate change on all time scales. He is the author of a dozen books and over 275 refereed articles (including the Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA) and book chapters in the area of geophysics and climate dynamics. His research interests include atmospheric and oceanic sciences, climate dynamics, dynamical and complex systems theory, estimation theory, extreme events and prediction, geophysical fluid dynamics, macroeconomics, numerical and statistical methods, remote sensing and applications. He was awarded the 2011 Alfred Wegener Medal from the European Geosciences Union and has been recognized as an honorary member of the Union in 2012.

Jaime Urrutia Fucugauchi is the Director of the Institute of Geophysics at National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) since 1997 and is a Professor at the Institute of Geophysics at UNAM since 1984. He is also the Chairman, Department of Geomagnetism and Geophysical Exploration at the Institute of Geophysics, UNAM (since 1984). He is a former President of the Mexican Geophysical Union (1985-1987). He has also served as an Associate Editor of the Journal of Geophysical Research (1993-1995) (American Geophysical Union). He has over 200 research articles in the field. His research interests include Geo- and Paleo-magnetism, Magnetostratigraphy, Paleogeography and Tectonics, Paleoclimatic and Environmental Evolution and Exploration Geophysics.