Lamont Weekly Report, July 31, 2015

       

     This week has been as rare as a blue moon, the term sometimes used to describe the second of two occurrences of a full moon within a single month. The blue moon this month was this morning at 10:43 UTC (6:43 EDT). The last blue moon was in 2012, and the next will not be until 2018.
 
     The American Geophysical Union announced this week that Suzanne Carbotte has been named a Fellow (https://eos.org/agu-news/2015-class-of-agu-fellows-announced). AGU’s Fellows are arguably rarer than a blue moon, given that no more than 0.1% of the membership can be accorded such an honor in a given year. Suzanne’s fellowship will be recognized at the AGU Fall Meeting in December. Among her class of new Fellows are Cynthia Rosenzweig from GISS, former Lamont Research Professor Geoff Abers, former Lamont Postdoctoral Research Scientist and Associate Research Scientist Jonathan Overpeck, and former Columbia University Professor Martin Visbeck. To Suzanne and all of AGU’s newest Fellows, congratulations!
 
     This week, the Geochemistry Division welcomed Maria Jaume Seguí as a new Staff Associate. Maria is a Research Staff Assistant at the University of Barcelona, where she works with Leo Pena.
 
     Also this week, the Ocean and Climate Physics Division welcomed David Grames as a new Administrative Assistant. David should be well known to many at Lamont, having served as Project Coordinator for the past eight years in the Borehole Research Group.
 
     Departing Lamont this week for an Associate Research Scientist position at Texas A&M University is Trevor Williams. A member of the Borehole Research Group since 1999, Trevor works on the paleoclimate of the Antarctic, particularly marine sediment records from the Southern Ocean of past episodes of warmer climate. He is the lead investigator on a project, conducted with Sid Hemming and colleagues from several other institutions, that is addressing the sediment provenance in the Weddell Sea embayment to investigate the sequence and timing of Antarctic ice sheet retreat during the last deglaciation, and whether the West Antarctic ice sheet collapsed during previous interglacials.
 
     Donna Shillington is back in Georgia to lead phase 2 of the SUwanee suture and GA Rift basin (SUGAR) experiment. Building on a successful first phase of the seismic imaging experiment last year, Donna and her group are now setting out 2000 seismometers in positions to record 25 controlled subsurface explosions. The site of the experiment is thought to display structural signatures of the continental collision that contributed to the formation of the Pangea supercontinent, the later rifting that led to the opening of the Atlantic Ocean, and the still-later emplacement of portions of the Central Atlantic Magmatic Province. Progress on the experiment can be followed on Donna’s blog (http://www.ldeo.columbia.edu//research/blogs/sugar-suwanee-suture-and-ga-rift-basin-experiment), which resumed on Tuesday following a hiatus of 16 months.
 
     The R/V Langseth began the week at the SUNY Maritime Academy in the Bronx, and for yet another week Sean Higgins led tours of the ship, with assistance from Jeff Rupert. On Monday, the ship welcomed a delegation from Columbia, including Executive Vice President for Research Mike Purdy and Marley Bauce, Greg Culler, Victoria Hamilton, Adrian Hill (with Mark Schneiderman), Betsy MacLeod, and Tom Morgan from his office; Executive Vice President for Communications David Stone and Beth Kwon from his office; Vice President for Information Technology and Chief Information Officer Gaspare LoDuca and Maneesha Aggarwal, George Costakis, Alan Crosswell, George Garrett, Halayn Hescock, Rob Lane, and Andrew Thompson from his office; and Precision Medicine Initiative Manager Lee Nunley. Later that day, Robin Bell escorted guest Mark Zand and was joined by Roger Buck, Paul Richards, and Jack Burger, a guest of Paul who had sailed on the R/V Vema. On Tuesday, a video crew arranged by David Stone and Beth Kwon visited the ship and interviewed Sean; they will later interview other Lamont scientists to create a science video on the Langseth and the work that it enables our scientists to conduct.
 
     Tuesday afternoon also featured the Lamont Summer Intern Symposium. In Monell Auditorium each intern gave a 1-minute oral presentation on the overall objectives of his or her research project. The 26 interns then presented the findings from their work in a two-hour poster session in the Comer Atrium. A reception for the interns and their guests and mentors followed. Bill Menke captured each stage of the afternoon in photographs (http://www.ldeo.columbia.edu/users/menke/slides/internposters15/internposters15_0.html). Program directors Dallas Abbott and Mike Kaplan and all of this year’s intern mentors deserve our thanks for another successful program year.
 
     On Wednesday, I spent several hours at Columbia’s Office of Alumni and Development. I met first with Special Advisor for University Development Priorities Ryan Hart. Then Art Lerner-Lam, Earth Institute Director of Funding Initiatives Casey Supple, and I met over lunch with Executive Vice President for University Development and Alumni Relations Amelia Alverson and Deputy Vice President for Development Ryan Carmichael. In both conversations I described Lamont’s strategic initiatives, and we discussed how those initiatives might fit into the larger fundraising campaign that the university began earlier this year.
 
     The Langseth finally put to sea last night. The ship has begun a month-long cruise, cosponsored by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the University of New Hampshire, to carry out a mapping survey of the seaward boundaries of the U.S. extended continental shelf.
 
     Remember Malaysia Airlines flight 370, which disappeared after taking off from Kuala Lumpur in March of last year? The recovery of a piece of a Boeing 777 in Reunion this week prompted National Public Radio and other media to interview Arnold Gordon on the likelihood that ocean currents could have carried crash debris across nearly the full width of the Indian Ocean (http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2015/07/30/427797940/experts-mh370-debris-could-have-reached-western-indian-ocean). Arnold’s answer: “very likely.”
 
     Whether you seek escape from the heat wave that has plagued much of the nation this week or relish the nearly full moon this evening, may you enjoy the first weekend of August.
 
 
 
 
       Sean