Marina Jurica

Marina Jurica joined CBS News Los Angeles in September 2023 after spending four years with NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, CA. She worked on many Earth missions there including SWOT, Sentinel-6, NISAR, ICE-SAT2, and the landing of the Perseverance Mars rover. Previously she worked for 20 years as an Emmy award winning meteorologist in the most dynamic weather markets across the country including Minneapolis, MN, Cincinnati, OH, Orlando, FL, Lexington, KY and Fresno, CA as the first female Chief Meteorologist.

Marina did her undergraduate and graduate studies in atmospheric science and music performance at UCLA and Mississippi State University and is currently getting her PhD in climate science. She is studying the atmospheric effects on melting glaciers from above and below in places across the world like Greenland and Alaska and how we can adapt to these changes globally. She is very passionate about our changing climate and looks forward to bringing you up close and personal stories about our changing Earth and how space technology is helping us change with it.

She also loves to educate the future generation of scientists speaking to classrooms across the globe.

Fun facts: Marina is a very proud second-generation UCLA Bruin and attends all the football and basketball games. Both her parents were born in Croatia, and she speaks the language fluently and travels back there often. She got a full scholarship to UCLA for opera performance and has performed on Broadway, has had many musical theater leads across the country, she's sung with orchestras from the Hollywood Bowl to the Orlando Philharmonic, and has performed the national anthem for many professional sports teams including the Wild, Magic, Reds, Twins, Angels, Timberwolves, and at Pauley for UCLA hoops!

In her spare time, Marina loves traveling with her husband and future paleontologist son John on dinosaur digs across the planet!