Lamont Weekly Report, April 10, 2015

  

     This time of year is always busy at Lamont, and this week has been no exception.
 
     Maureen Raymo learned this week that she has been elected an Honorary Fellow of the Geological Society of London, the oldest national geological society in the world. Her citation reads, in part, as follows: “Maureen Raymo was the first female recipient of the Wollaston Medal, the Society’s most senior medal. She is an outstandingly creative scientist who has been setting the agenda in the study of the history of the ocean, and the Earth as a whole. She is a world class palaeoceanographer and one of the foremost and influential figures in the last 30 years during which time she has had a profound impact on Earth system science.” Others from Lamont who were earlier accorded this honor include Wally Broecker and Lynn Sykes. Congratulations, Mo!
 
     The Seismology, Geology and Tectonophysics Division welcomed new Postdoctoral Research Scientist Elise Rumpf. A physical volcanologist, Elise received Bachelor's degrees in physics and geology from SUNY Buffalo. Last year, she obtained a Ph.D. in geology and geophysics from the University of Hawaii at Manoa, where she worked on models for magma ascent, volcanic modification of impact craters, and preservation of volatiles in volcanic substrates on the Moon and Venus. At Lamont, Elise will work with Einat Lev on numerical and laboratory analogue studies of the influence of substrate properties on the emplacement of lava flows on the Earth and other rocky solar system bodies.
 
     The Marine Geology and Geophysics Division recently welcomed new Postdoctoral Scientist Paul Betka. Paul completed his Ph.D. in structural geology in 2013 at the University of Texas, Austin, where he worked under the supervision of Sharon Mosher. He joins the Observatory from the Alaska Division of Geological and Geophysical Surveys, where he was a Geologist in the Energy Division. At Lamont, Paul will work with Nano Seeber and Michael Steckler on the tectonics of the Indo-Burma fold belt. Although he officially started his Lamont position in mid-February, within days of his arrival Paul flew to Myanmar and India for more than a month of fieldwork and the collection of over 1600 structural measurements and 75 kg of samples. He is now driving his belongings from Alaska and will settle into his office next week.
 
     Mike Steckler is also the focus of a recent article in Earth Magazine on filmmaking for geoscience (http://www.earthmagazine.org/tags/doug-prose). Filmmakers Doug Prose and Diane LaMacchia are following Mike and his colleagues as they study the interplay of earthquakes, sea-level rise, floods, and changes in the course of rivers in Bangladesh.
 
     Donna Shillington, Natalie Accardo, and their colleagues completed a 29-day cruise in Lake Malawi to image the fault structures beneath the lake that are accommodating extension across the East African Rift, including faults that may have been involved in recent earthquake activity in northern Malawi. To complete their experiment, the group had to transform a container ship into a seismic research vessel. Despite the failure of two generators and many other challenges, the team collected high-quality data along more than 3000 km of track lines in the lake. Next week Jim Gaherty will lead a cruise on a Malawi fisheries vessel to recover seismometers that had been deployed on the lake floor to record the seismic lines.
 
     On Wednesday, Lamont’s annual Postdoctoral Symposium was held in the Comer Building. Twenty-two oral presentations and 14 poster presentations demonstrated the broad sweep of research now being led by our postdoctoral scientists. Oral presentations were given by Nicholas Balascio, Nigel D’souza, Heather Ford, Mathieu Levesque, and Kimberly Popendorf from the Biology and Paleo Environment Division; Kelsey Dyez, Yael Kiro, and Nicolas Young from Geochemistry; Lucia Gualtieri, Christopher Havlin, and Patty Lin from Seismology, Geology and Tectonophysics; Céline Grall, Jean-Arthur Olive, and Natalia Zakharova from Marine Geology and Geophysics; and Louis Clément, Lee Murray, Ji Nie, Sarah Purkey, Jack Scheff, Lukas Valin, Aiko Voigt, and Allison Wing from Ocean and Climate Physics. Lucia, Yael, and Lee also presented posters, as did Chandranath Basak, Jeff Bowman, Elizabeth Corbett, Cyrus Karas, Bess Koffman, Tobias Koffman, Sarah Lambart, Cristina Recasens, Kevin Uno, Yakov Weiss, and Jian Zhao. A total of 33 of Lamont’s current cadre of 43 postdoctoral scientists took part in the symposium.
 
     Also on Wednesday, Brad Linsley, Emilie Dassié, and coauthors published a paper in Geophysical Research Letters documenting evidence from coral proxies for sea-surface temperature (SST) that decadal-scale changes in South Pacific SST correlate with changes in upper ocean heat content in the region. Moreover, the changes in the South Pacific, which display a mean period of about 25 years, appear to correlate with patterns of ocean temperature indicators elsewhere in the Pacific. Their results support an evaporative cooling mechanism for ocean-atmosphere heat exchange on decadal time scales. Importantly, their findings also suggest that in the next phase of the cycle the net uptake of atmospheric heat by the oceans will be reduced, so the rate of atmospheric warming will increase. A Mashable story on the paper and its implications appeared yesterday (http://mashable.com/2015/04/09/rapid-global-warming/). 
 
     Other news stories this week featuring the work or commentary of Lamont scientists dealt mostly with the California drought. An Andy Revkin Dot Earth article in Sunday’s New York Times (http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/04/05/californias-wasteful-water-habits-run-up-against-a-dry-future-and-past/?_r=0) cited work by Richard Seager, Ed Cook, and alumna Celine Herweijer on the paleoclimate records of past droughts in the region. A Live Science story Wednesday (http://www.livescience.com/50417-california-drought-future.html) quoted Ben Cook and Park Williams on what climate models have to say about prospects for the region in the future. Also on Wednesday, Adam Sobel offered an op-ed piece on CNN on the roles of natural variability and global warming on droughts and other extreme events as well as lessons such events can teach us about managing water delivery systems and other elements of our infrastructure in a changing world (http://www.cnn.com/2015/04/08/opinions/sobel-california-drought/).
 
     This morning, the R/V Marcus G. Langseth sailed from Charleston, South Carolina, to begin a cruise sponsored by the U.S. Geological Survey to conduct two-dimensional multi-channel seismic profiles of the extended continental shelf (ECS) of eastern North America. The research objectives of the cruise are to measure sediment thickness and delineate the outer limits of the ECS beyond 200 nautical miles and to image two entire landslide systems from near the continental slope to their run-out deposits on the lower continental rise and abyssal plain. The chief scientists for the cruise are Debbie Hutchinson and Nathan Miller.
 
     Today, a workshop on “Talking to Media and Policy Makers” is being held in the Comer Seminar Room. The workshop is being led by staff members from COMPASS, an organization that trains scientists to “effectively engage in public discussions and decision-making processes about the environment” (http://www.compassonline.org/). There were 45 participants from the campus at last count.
 
     Two events next week deserve your attention. On Tuesday, Columbia University's Executive Vice President for Finance, Anne Sullivan, will visit Lamont to discuss how the new federal Uniform Guidance rules will impact grants from federal science agencies. Because our research community is so strongly reliant on federal funding, this presentation on new rules for oversight, compliance, and reporting and the Q&A session that will follow will provide important information not only for current PIs but also for anyone who plans to submit proposals to federal science agencies in the future. Moreover, the event will provides a rare opportunity for our community to meet with and question a representative from the top tier of Columbia University leadership. Anne’s presentation will take place in the Monell Auditorium, beginning at 9:30 am, and I hope that many of you will attend.
 
     On Friday next week, Lamont’s annual Diversity Lecture will be given by Suzanne Goldberg, Columbia University’s Executive Vice President for University Life, Herbert and Doris Wechsler Clinical Professor of Law, and Director of the Law School’s Center for Gender and Sexuality Law (http://www.law.columbia.edu/magazine/60105/suzanne-b-goldberg). Kuheli Dutt is handling arrangements for the lecture and has offered to schedule meetings with the speaker for those who are interested.
 
     In the meantime, the Earth Science Colloquium today will be given by Colleen Hansel, an Associate Scientist in the Department of Marine Chemistry and Geochemistry at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (https://www.whoi.edu/profile/chansel/). Colleen’s lecture will be on “Expanding the role of microorganisms in the production of superoxide within marine systems: Implications for coral bleaching” (http://www.ldeo.columbia.edu/files/uploaded/image/file/Colleen%20Hansel.pdf). I hope to see you there.
 
       Sean