This week began on a high note, with a symposium Monday and Tuesday celebrating Mark Cane’s 70th birthday by honoring his four decades of seminal contributions to climate science (http://www.ldeo.columbia.edu/~virginia/Mark70thSymposium/). Among the distinguished group of speakers from around the world were Richard Seager, IRI’s Lisa Goddard and Steve Zebiak, the Mailman School’s Jeffrey Shaman, and Columbia alumni John Chiang, Amy Clement, Heidi Cullen, Julien Emile-Geay, Gidon Eshel, Christina Karamperidou, Tom Koutavas, Peter Molnar, Raghu Murtugudde, Jeff Severinghaus, and Sam White.
The week also began with the announcement that Steve Goldstein has been named Lamont's Associate Director for Geochemistry. Steve will represent the Division well in discussions now underway on additions to the Lamont Research Professor ranks, space and infrastructure needs, and other campus management issues. Please join me in thanking Art Lerner-Lam for his conscientious service as Interim Associate Director for Geochemistry since the beginning of July. With the able assistance of Division Administrator Moanna St. Clair and her administrative colleagues, the engine of progress that is our Geochemistry Division ran smoothly and in its usual high gear on Art's watch.
On Thursday, two groups met on campus and were introduced to some of the work of the Observatory. Thirty-six community, government, and corporate leaders from Leadership Rockland spent the morning in the Worzel Room in Lamont Hall as part of their “Environmental Day.” Dorothy Peteet and Margie Turrin shared some of our research and educational initiatives that are focused on the Hudson River estuary. That afternoon, a group of twenty leaders in stewardship and donor relations from Columbia University's Office of Alumni and Development, Columbia College, College of Physicians and Surgeons, School of Social Work, Mailman School of Public Health, Law School, Business School, and other units met in the Comer seminar room. Through introductory presentations and a tour of the Lamont Core Repository, the group learned about an important scientific component of the university.
The program on climate change at the International Center of Photography in Midtown Manhattan, conducted in partnership with Lamont and IRI, continued apace this week. A panel discussion on Greening the Economy (http://www.icp.org/events/2014/october/20/greening-economy) on Monday evening was moderated by Art Lerner-Lam. Ongoing is the ICP’s Instagram “takeover” that highlights the role of photography in understanding climate change and features a different photographer each week. Many of this week’s postings came from Nicole Davi and include a variety of perspectives on several decades of tree-ring research in Alaska, Mongolia, and New Zealand (http://icphoto.tumblr.com/). Next week Rebecca Fowler will take the helm to “post photos of Lamont climate scientists at work in the lab and field.” The link to follow along is http://instagram.com/icp. For anyone who wishes to contribute photos, there is still time. Rebecca adds, “photos that feature people are best, and any activities shown should have some connection to climate science.”
Newly published online this week is a paper in Nature Geoscience by Milena Marjanović, Suzanne Carbotte, Hélène Carton, John Mutter and colleagues reporting a series of seismic reflections resolved beneath the axial magma lens along the East Pacific Rise between 9°20' and 10°N. The reflections are interpreted by the group as evidence for a complex system of magma lenses at different depths that collectively contribute to the formation of both the upper and lower portions of oceanic crust along this fast-spreading ridge. A Kim Martineau story on the work was posted on Tuesday (http://www.ldeo.columbia.edu/news-events/volcanic-plumbing-mid-ocean-ridges-goes-far-deeper-thought).
New to our web pages this week is a photo essay (http://www.ldeo.columbia.edu/news-events/photo-essay-day-life-hudson-river) on the participation by Lamont scientists in A Day in the Life of the Hudson River (http://www.ldeo.columbia.edu/edu/k12/snapshotday/). This annual educational and outreach event celebrates the Hudson River estuary and is coordinated by the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation and Lamont. Photo subjects from Tuesday’s activities include participants Liz Corbett, Rich Iannuzzi, Bess Koffman, Frank Pavia, Dorothy Peteet, Angela Slagle, and lead organizer Margie Turrin.
Adam Sobel’s new account of Hurricane Sandy, Storm Surge, received another laudatory review in The Washington Post last week (http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/storm-surge-by-adam-sobel-superstorm-by-kathryn-miles-on-hurricane-sandy/2014/10/17/39166a9c-509b-11e4-babe-e91da079cb8a_story.html). Despite the aside that Adam “nerds out on the nuts and bolts of tropical meteorology,” Eric Holthaus concludes that the book is “a masterful account of the science and policy implications” of the storm.
This afternoon’s Earth Science Colloquium will be given by Colette Heald, the Mitsui Career Development Associate Professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering and the Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences at MIT (http://cee.mit.edu/heald). Colette will be speaking on “The climate, air quality and vegetation traffic circle.” The climate and air quality in the auditorium should be up to the task, so I hope you won’t let the Monell-bound traffic of colleagues keep you from attending.
Sean