The highlight of the week was the “Blizzard of 2015” and the history-making shutdown of New York City on Tuesday. Adam Sobel was much in the news, both ahead of the storm’s arrival as a guest on the Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC (http://www.wnyc.org/story/blizzard-coming/), and commenting afterwards in The New York Times (http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/28/science/snowstorms-forecasters-were-mostly-right.html) on the general accuracy of the forecast despite the lesser snow levels in New York than the upper end of the range of predictions.
Even though snow accumulations in the area did not reach the early predictions of 2–3 feet, considerable work was required to clear the roadways and walkways on the Lamont Campus in time for a normal opening on Wednesday morning. Lenny Sullivan and his 12-man crew of Bruce Baez, Tom Burke, Carmine Cavaliere, Bob Daly, Tony De Loatch, Charles Jones, Stevenson Louis, Mike McHugh, Ray Slavin, Eric Soto, Kevin Sullivan, and Rick Trubiroha worked from 8 am Monday morning until noon on Tuesday, 28 hours straight. Strong winds and drifting snow made the work conditions particularly difficult. According to Lenny, his crew moved every snowflake at least six times.
And while we are listing those who devoted extraordinary efforts to the health and safety of the campus during the storm, our Security Guard, Gerard Preval, warrants special mention. Gerard stayed at his post for 32 hours straight until he was relieved.
Thanks, gentlemen, from your hundreds of Lamont friends and colleagues!
There were other news stories this week that featured the research of Lamont scientists. An article Sunday in High Country News highlighted the work of Park Williams on the role of climate change in the mortality of forests, particularly the change in the atmospheric vapor pressure deficit on the incidence of major wildfires in the southwestern U.S. (http://www.hcn.org/articles/an-atmosphere-gone-bananas-and-2011s-megafires). A story Wednesday in New Scientist cited Mark Cane on his assessment of predictions that global warming would lead to more extreme El Niño and La Niña events (http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn26858-la-ninas-on-the-rise-in-climate-change-double-whammy.html#.VMqlDsbC8os). The Lamont Log this week gives a shout out to Bärbel Hönisch, Gisela Winckler, and Xiaojun Yuan for their autobiographical sketches in the December issue of Oceanography magazine devoted to “Women in Oceanography” (http://www.tos.org/oceanography/archive/27-4_supplement.html); Robin Bell’s leadership role in the NSF ADVANCE program at Lamont is cited in an article in the same issue.
Also new to the Lamont web pages this week is collection of photos organized by Gisela Winckler from the Volcanoes, Ocean Ice and Carbon Experiments (VOICE) cruise of the R/V Atlantis last fall to the Juan de Fuca Ridge. The Photo Essay, posted by Kevin Krajick (http://www.ldeo.columbia.edu/news-events/photo-essay-fire-and-ice-cascadia), documents some of the mapping, drilling, and sampling work conducted by a large contingent of staff scientists and students from Lamont who participated in the cruise, which explored the hypothesis that the waxing and waning of ice ages affect rates of volcanism and hydrothermal activity along mid-ocean ridges.
The Observatory’s new mentoring program for our Lamont Assistant Research Professors and Lamont Associate Research Professors (Junior Staff) kicked off this week with the first in a series of sessions in which Art Lerner-Lam and I meet with individual junior faculty members and their primary and secondary mentors from the Senior Staff. The expectation of each mentor is to help the junior faculty member set career goals; integrate the junior faculty member into the Lamont community; nurture the professional growth of the junior faculty member and foster the development of professional skills in research, teaching, and oral and written presentation; act as an advocate and help to build a supportive environment for research and scholarship; provide advice and input in the preparation of grant proposals; promote the junior faculty member within the broader research community and assist in the development of a network of professional colleagues; and advise the junior faculty member toward a successful Major Review.
On Thursday, Art, Sean Higgins, and I met with Mike Purdy and Victoria Hamilton, director of Columbia University’s Office of Research Initiatives, to discuss the university’s role in exploiting an opportunity to modernize the marine seismic system for the R/V Langseth. The opportunity has been enabled by the offer at a deeply discounted price of a refurbished system from a geophysical services company.
The Earth Science Colloquium this afternoon will be given by Raffaele Ferrari, the Breene M. Kerr Professor of Oceanography in the Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences at MIT (http://web.mit.edu/raffaele/www/Home.html) and the Director of that department’s Program in Atmospheres, Oceans and Climate. Raf’s talk will be on “An ocean tale of two climates: Modern and Last Glacial Maximum” (http://www.ldeo.columbia.edu/files/uploaded/image/file/Raffaele%20Ferrari.pdf). If the two climates seem unusually similar this week, come and hear the perspective from the oceans.
Sean