The extended Lamont community was saddened this past weekend with news of the death of Columbia University and Lamont alumnus Gary Boucher (http://www.legacy.com/obituaries/dailycamera/obituary.aspx?pid=173168031). Gary obtained his Ph.D. in seismology in 1969 after successfully defending his thesis on “Three studies of microearthquakes.”
Nano Seeber overlapped with Gary in graduate school and remembers him well. Nano writes, “Back in 1966-67, Gary and I were graduate students under Jack Oliver. We took on the task of developing one of the first portable seismometers. Gary was senior to me and did most of the designing: A battery pack, a seismometer, an amplifier and a smoke-paper recorder that fit in three boxes mounted on an aluminum backpack frame. It was heavy, but we would be able to deploy it far from road access. We built five prototypes and drove across country in a pickup truck–camper to test them in the quietness of the Nevada deserts. Late in 1967, we went out again to St George, Utah, to monitor an intense swarm in the mountains near the Nevada border. While driving a dirt road in those mountains, we found a bobcat caught in a trap. Gary opened the clamp on the bobcat’s paw with a screwdriver and liberated the animal, at considerable risk of getting mauled. We got snowed in, but we managed to get out in time for Gary to present results on the swarm at AGU. Shortly thereafter, Gary graduated from Lamont and went professorial in the West. I remember him as an intense but quiet and gentle young man.”
Despite the sad news of the loss of one of our former graduate students, there is good news involving one of our current students. The Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences announced on Wednesday that the Sara Langer Book Prize this year will go to Kyle Frischkorn. The prize is given to a pre-orals student for outstanding contributions to graduate student life in DEES and at Lamont, and the selection is made by fellow students. Congratulations, Kyle!
I spent four of the five workdays this week in Washington, DC. On Monday, I attended a meeting of the GRAIL Science Team, held at the Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center, part of the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum located near the Washington Dulles International Airport. From Wednesday through this afternoon I was in town for the National Medals of Science and Technology ceremony and the associated events before and after. (Thanks to hearing Wally Broecker’s account of his trip to DC to receive an earlier medal, I remembered to pack my tuxedo.) One surprise for me was that all of the medals presented this week were for the year 2012. We were told that for many years, through both Republican and Democratic Presidencies, there has been a long delay between the recommendation of medalists by the selecting committees and the announcement and presentation of the awards by the White House. By such metrics may we appreciate the pace of movement of the gears of government.
Today is the last day on campus for Lamont Assistant Research Professor Leo Pena. Leo and his family are moving to Barcelona, where he has accepted a Ramón y Cajal Researcher (equivalent to an Assistant Professor) position at the Department of Stratigraphy, Paleontology and Marine Geosciences at the University of Barcelona. Leo will keep an adjunct appointment at Lamont to complete his several collaborative research projects now underway, and we can expect to welcome him back for regular visits. In the meantime, please join me in wishing Leo well in his new post.
In a paper published online this week in Geophysical Research Letters, Tim Creyts, Robin Bell, Mike Wolovick, and their colleagues describe evidence from ice-penetrating radar not only for the extraordinary state of relief of the ice-covered, Appalachian-aged Gamburtsev Mountains in Antarctica, but also for clues to the processes that help to preserve that relief. The preservation mechanism is tied to refreezing of basal water, including water driven uphill along steep mountain topography by the weight of the overlying ice. A Kim Martineau story on their work, posted on the Lamont web pages this week (http://www.ldeo.columbia.edu/news-events/fountain-youth-underlies-antarctic-mountains), has been picked up by the media (http://www.livescience.com/48824-how-ice-preserved-gamburtsev-mountains.html).
Lamont’s IcePod team – including Robin Bell, Chris Bertinato, Winnie Chu, Tej Dhakal, Nick Frearson, and Scott Brown – has been in Antarctica since the end of last month to gather more such data, complete the final commissioning of IcePod, and test a gravimeter from New Zealand that was recently added to the system. Robin writes, “The first two weeks of November were spent waiting for other activities to be completed, including the opening of the South Pole Station and the movement of several dozen Australians to the other side of the continent. This week the team finally had a chance to fly. The first flight was a shakedown to the south pole as part of a fuel delivery mission, and the second flight yielded the first IcePod mapping of the Ross Ice Shelf. The radars are imaging the structure of the ice sheet and the floating ice shelf. The cameras are capturing rich new insights into the thermal structure of the ice sheet, including cold air pouring out of open crevasses. The gravity data measured with a gravity meter rolled off a forklift at the start of each flight have been spectacular. The New York Air National Guard LC-130s appear to be great platforms for collecting gravity. More IcePod flights are scheduled for the next two weeks.”
Lamont scientists continued their public outreach efforts at a high level this week. On Monday evening, Ben Holtzman staged a second showing of SeismoDome: Sights and Sounds of Earthquakes and Global Seismology, in Hayden Planetarium at the American Museum of Natural History (http://www.amnh.org/calendar/seismodome-sights-and-sounds-of-earthquakes-and-global-seismology). Created in partnership with Jason Candler, a musician and sound engineer affiliated with the Tisch School of the Arts at New York University, the video and audio exhibit of earthquake seismicity and wave propagation played to a large and appreciative audience, including many from the Lamont community.
On Tuesday evening, Margie Turrin spoke to a full audience at the Bruce Museum in Greenwich, Connecticut, as part of their Science Lecture Series: Exploring Antarctica (https://brucemuseum.org/site/education_detail/science-lecture-series-exploring-antarctica). Margie’s talk, entitled “West meets east in unique Antarctic voyage,” described her 2013 trip to the Antarctic Peninsula with others from Lamont on a cruise by the Antarctic Forum, an interdisciplinary group of leaders from the business, government, and cultural sectors in China.
Craig Aumack and Andy Juhl were interviewed for Monday’s PBS News Hour show about their work on algal communities within Arctic sea ice and the underlying ocean (http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/scientists-read-layers-alaskas-ice-snow-track-climate-change/). The pair was also featured on a National Science Foundation video produced as part of the Foundation’s Science Nation series (http://www.pbs.org/newshour/updates/researchers-crack-open-ice-find-tiniest-arctic-creatures/). A CNN Opinion piece posted on Tuesday by Adam Sobel discusses the recent U.S.-China agreement to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and why the pact represents progress toward curtailing the long-term global rise in atmospheric temperature (http://www.cnn.com/2014/11/18/opinion/sobel-china-climate-deal-huge/index.html). Also on Tuesday, Columbia’s Advanced Consortium on Cooperation, Conflict, and Complexity posted an interview with Klaus Jacob about his work on disaster risk management and urban resilience (http://ac4.ei.columbia.edu/2014/11/18/interview-with-klaus-jacob-columbias-disaster-risk-and-climate-expert/).
This afternoon’s Earth Science Colloquium will be given by Becky Alexander, an Associate Professor in the Department of Atmospheric Sciences at the University of Washington (http://www.atmos.washington.edu/blog/beckya/becky-alexander/). An atmospheric chemist with expertise in tropospheric aerosol and oxidant chemistry, Becky will be speaking on the topic of “Climate-driven changes in the oxidation capacity of the atmosphere.” The capacity of the atmosphere of Monell Auditorium enables a large audience, and I hope that you will be able to hear the talk.
Sean