A notable natural event this week was the Perseid meteor shower, which peaked before dawn this morning when Earth passed through the center of the trail of Comet Swift-Tuttle (http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/11/science/perseid-meteor-shower-2016.html). I hope that some of you caught the show.
A recent addition to Lamont’s web site is a Stacy Morford story on last week’s Workshop on Internal Cycling of Trace Elements in the Ocean, jointly sponsored by the GEOTRACES Program and the Ocean Carbon and Biochemistry activity of the U.S. Carbon Cycle Science Program (http://www.ldeo.columbia.edu/news-events/geotraces-geochemists-biologists-new-approach-ocean-research). The workshop, for which Bob Anderson was one of the lead organizers, focused on setting priorities for exploiting GEOTRACES data to advance scientific objectives at the interface between marine chemistry and marine ecology. Among the top priorities identified were understanding nutrient cycling and determining the sensitivity of important phytoplankton species to nutrient availability.
Several Lamont scientists have been in the news over the past week. Last Friday, Vox Populi posted an interview with Peter deMenocal about the partnership between Lamont and the World Surf League to improve our understanding of the future health of the world’s oceans (http://voxpopuli.earth/thetidings/introducing-wsl-pure). A Jason Samenow story Monday in The Washington Post on a record low July temperature set late last month at Summit Station on the apex of the Greenland ice sheet quoted Marco Tedesco that the reading was no more than an interesting contrast with the overall warmth seen across Greenland this summer (https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/capital-weather-gang/wp/2016/08/08/greenland-ice-sheet-summit-plunged-to-record-low-july-temperature-so-what/). And National Geographic posted on story Wednesday on the project Steve Chillrud is conducting with colleagues from the Mailman School of Public Health (without quoting Steve, however) on the effects of urban air pollution on the health of cyclists (http://news.nationalgeographic.com/2016/08/bicycles-air-pollution-health-new-york-city-columbia-university/).
On Monday next week, the high school interns from Lamont’s Secondary School Field Research Program will be giving presentations on their summer work in the Piermont Marsh. The presentations will start at 11 am in the Comer Seminar Room and will be followed by a barbeque on the lawn behind Lamont Hall. Also next Monday, students completing the M.A. Program in Climate and Society will give poster presentations on their thesis work as part of the Annual Applied Climate Science Student Showcase. That event will start at 1 pm in the Monell Lobby.
On Wednesday and Thursday next week, Lamont will host the North American Symposium on Climate Change Adaptation, which is being organized jointly by Columbia University, the International Climate Change Information Programme, and the Hamburg University of Applied Sciences (http://extremeweather.columbia.edu/events/workshop/). Adam Sobel serves on the symposium’s Scientific Organizing Committee, which is co-chaired by Jesse Keenan, Research Director for Columbia’s Center for Urban Real Estate, and also includes Radley Horton of the Center for Climate Systems Research and Kate Orff, Director of the Urban Design Program in Columbia’s Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation. The symposium aims to mobilize “scholars, practitioners and members of governmental agencies, undertaking research and/or executing climate change projects in North America and the Caribbean region,” to showcase “experiences from research, field projects and best practices in climate change adaptation and resilience among countries in the region,” and “to translate the integration of climate science with socio-economic policies in the public and private sectors.”
In the meantime, the National Weather Service has issued excessive heat warnings for New York City and southern New York State for today and through the weekend. May you find a way to stay cool, as a personal form of climate change adaptation.
Sean