The week began with a Washington Post story on Monday reporting that state government officials in Florida, and those in the Department of Environmental Protection in particular, are prohibited from using the terms “climate change” and “global warming” (http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2015/03/09/florida-state-most-affected-by-climate-change-reportedly-bans-term-climate-change/). Another perspective, by the man who coined the latter term, appeared last week (http://www.funnyordie.com/articles/44d2ccb862/the-scientist-who-named-it-global-warming-would-like-to-apologize).
On Tuesday, Kevin Krajick posted his annual summary of fieldwork planned by Lamont scientists over the year ahead (http://www.ldeo.columbia.edu/news-events/upcoming-scientific-fieldwork-2015-and-beyond). We often claim that our scientists work “on every continent and every ocean,” and the latest summary indicates that we’ll touch most of the bases over the next 12 months.
On Wednesday, Lamont’s Advisory Board met at the Columbia Club in Midtown Manhattan. The Board heard from Sonya Dyhrman, who spoke on “The unseen majority: New tools track the microscopic world from Antarctica to Hawaii and beyond.” Following the Board meeting, Heather Savage gave a Director’s Circle lecture on the topic of “Induced seismicity: An accidental experiment.”
On Thursday, Park Williams, Richard Seager, Ben Cook, and colleagues published a paper online in Geophysical Research Letters documenting that urbanization in southern California has led to an increase in the base height of summer stratus clouds and a decrease in fog in coastal southern California. The effects of these changes on atmospheric energy and water balance will strongly influence the regional ecology. The paper received immediate media attention, including an “in depth” report in Science (http://www.sciencemag.org/content/347/6227/1184.full) and an article on Climate Central (http://www.climatecentral.org/news/southern-california-concrete-kills-cooling-fog-18768).
The Lamont Log reminds us that applications for Lamont’s Summer Intern Program are due on Sunday. The theme of the program this summer is “Analyzing global databases” (http://www.ldeo.columbia.edu/education/programs/summer-internship/lamont-summer-intern-program).
Another recent addition to the Lamont web pages is a David Funkhouser story on the all-too-real-life application of the precise radiocarbon dating method developed by Kevin Uno and his colleagues to estimate the time of death of animals in the era since the atmospheric testing of nuclear weapons substantially modified atmospheric levels of 14C. A merchant in Canada was convicted, on the basis of accelerator mass spectrometer measurements of the carbon isotopes in tusk collagen, of selling ivory harvested after a global ban had been set by international agreement (http://www.ldeo.columbia.edu/news-events/science-nabs-illegal-ivory-sellers).
Kyle Frischkorn has also kept up his blog this week from the R.V. L’Atalante, while sailing the South Pacific from New Caledonia to Tahiti in pursuit of Trichodesmium and other nitrogen-fixing microbes and an understanding of their influence on the marine ecosystem (http://www.ldeo.columbia.edu/research/blogs/wide-ocean-tiny-creatures).
At 1 pm this afternoon, there will be a Town Hall meeting in Monell Auditorium to hear about options under consideration for investment in renewable energy systems for the campus. Everyone is invited to attend and join in the discussion.
Later this afternoon, Jason Bordoff will give the Arthur D. Storke Memorial Lecture, jointly sponsored by Lamont and the Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences (http://eesc.columbia.edu/events/storke-lecture). Jason is a Professor of Professional Practice in International and Public Affairs and Director of Columbia’s Center on Global Energy Policy (https://sipa.columbia.edu/faculty/jason-bordoff). His lecture will be on “The 2014 oil price crash: What caused it and why it matters.” I hope to see you there.
Sean