Don Easterbrook

I was born at home on the Easterbrook Road in Sumas on the Canadian border during the worst blizzard/ice storm of the century. My great grandfather and grandfather came to Sumas from New York in 1891, and I was the 4th generation of my family in Sumas.

As I was growing up, I spent summers roaming the high country in the North Cascades, hiking, climbing, skiing, and fishing high lakes. As a geologist, I have spent every summer in the field, mostly in the high mountains, but also climbing around on sea cliffs in the lowland. I have to live in a city (Bellingham), but my soul lives in the mountains.

I graduated from Bellingham High School and received B.S, M.S., and PhD degrees in geology from the University of Washington. When I left the UW, I joined the faculty at Western Washington University where I taught geology for more than 40 years. I'm now Emeritus Professor of Geology. I no longer teach but write and conduct research full time. I've written more than a dozen books and published more than 200 professional geological papers. Here are some of the recent books I've written:

2020 A walk through geologic time from Mt. Baker to Bellingham Bay 2nd edition

2020 The solar magnetic cause of climate changes and origin of the Ice Ages

2020 Ice Ages in Washington

2019 The cause of climate changes and origin of the Ice Ages

2019 Geology of Mt. Rainier National Park

2018 The early history of Sumas, WA

2018 Geology of Sun Valley Idaho

2017 Cruising through geologic time in the San Juan Islands

2016 Mt. Baker eruptions and glaciations

2016 The 1980 explosion of Mt. St. Helens

2016 Evidence-based climate science

2010 A walk through geologic time from Mt. Baker to Bellingham Bay

1999 Surface processes and landforms

All of these books are profusely illustrated with photos of geologic features that I took from the air. Dr. Dave Rahm taught me to fly and we took thousands of photos during hundreds of hours of flying.

My special field is glacial geology and climate changes through geologic time. I work a lot with ice core data, solar magnetic fields, cosmic ray incidence, and isotope production in the upper atmosphere. In a study of climate changes in ice cores dating back 800,000 years, I discovered that all climate changes over that period correlate exactly with changes in the sun's magnetic field, demonstrating that the Ice Ages and other smaller climate changes were caused by variation in the sun's magnetic field.

I was chairman of the Western Washington University geology department for 12 years, chairman of the 1977 national meeting of the Geological Society of America (GSA), president of the Quaternary Geology and Geomorphology Division of GSA, U.S. representative to the UN International Geological Correlation Program, and Director of Field Excursions for the 2003 International Quaternary Congress.

I received awards for ‘Distinguished service to the Geological Society of America,’ ‘Lifetime Achievement Award,’ and Honorable mention by the American Men of Science as one of “The Most Influential Scientists in North America.” I was featured in a NY Times story and appeared on national TV network shows at MSNBC, CNN, CBS and FOX.