Lamont Weekly Report, October 3, 2014

The Lamont community was saddened Wednesday by the news that Gordon Jacoby, a member of the scientific staff at the Observatory for more than a quarter of a century, passed away following a stroke. Gordon obtained his Ph.D. in hydrogeology at Columbia in 1971. Following a four-year appointment as a research hydrologist at UCLA, he returned to Lamont to co-found, with Ed Cook, the Observatory’s Tree-Ring Laboratory (TRL). Gordon was promoted to Lamont’s Senior Staff in 1984, he advanced to Senior Research Scientist in 1987, and he retired formally in 2001. He received Lamont's Excellence in Mentoring Award in 2002 and was named an Honorary Professor of Life Sciences by the National University of Mongolia the same year (http://www.earth.columbia.edu/news/2002/story11-15-02.html). Rosanne D'Arrigo writes that Gordon "was one of the pioneers of Arctic tree-ring research in North America." Of the TRL, Ed Cook recalls, “we established the lab in what is now the Lamont Daycare Center. This was almost 40 years ago, and the Lamont TRL became world famous for its groundbreaking accomplishments in global change research and other tree-ring research applications in the Earth Sciences. I expected to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the founding of the TRL next year with Gordon. That of course cannot happen now, but his legacy of scientific accomplishments will endure.” Gordon’s perspective on the founding of TRL is wryly detailed in Lamont’s 50th anniversary volume. Gordon was to have been married to Rusty Lotti, who served as curator in Lamont’s Core Repository for 26 years.

 
    Even as we digested news of the passing of one of the patriarchs of dendroclimatology, there were good tidings and scientific progress to balance the scales.
 
    The American Meteorological Society announced this week that Lorenzo Polvani has been named a 2015 Fellow of the society (http://www.ametsoc.org/awards/2015awardrecipients.pdf).
 
    Tuesday’s issue of Eos includes a list of all of the awards this year to be given by the Sections of the American Geophysical Union. At AGU’s Fall Meeting in two months, the Atmospheric Sciences Section will give one of their mid-career Ascent Awards to Adam Sobel, and former Lamont postdoctoral scientist Elizabeth (Libby) Barnes, now at Colorado State University, is to receive the James R. Holton Junior Scientist Award.
 
    Lee Murray received the Young Scientist Award for his presentation at the International Global Atmospheric Chemistry meeting, held last week in Natal, Rio Grande do Norte, Brazil (http://www.igac-icacgp2014.org/).
 
    Please join me in congratulating Lorenzo, Adam, Libby, and Lee on these noteworthy recognitions of their scientific contributions.
 
    The Geochemistry Division this week welcomed Di Wang, a Visiting Student from Nanjing University. With support from a scholarship awarded by the China Scholarship Council, Di will spend a year at Lamont studying the crustal evolution of southeastern China from chemical and isotopic analyses of rocks and zircons from the region. Di’s host at Lamont is Steve Goldstein.
 
    The Ocean and Climate Physics Division marked the arrival on Wednesday of Allison Wing as a National Science Foundation Postdoctoral Fellow. As an undergraduate at Cornell, Allison participated in Lamont’s Summer Intern Program, and she returned the following summer to continue her work with Suzana Camargo, Adam Sobel, and Lorenzo Polvani. Allison completed a Ph.D. at MIT in March under the supervision of Kerry Emanuel. At the last hurricane conference of the American Meteorological Society, Allison received the Max Eaton award for the best student presentation at the conference.
 
    OCP is also hosting Furqon Azis Ismail, a research scientist at the Indonesian Institute of Sciences, for a six-week visit. Supported by a fellowship from the Partnership for Observation of the Global Oceans, Dr. Ismail is working with Arnold Gordon on oceanographic aspects of the Indonesian throughflow.
 
    On Tuesday, the September issue of Lamont’s electronic newsletter was posted on our web site (http://us2.campaign-archive1.com/?u=71431ee4099fcd9f2e20d401a&id=88fa4143a3) and e-mailed to subscribers. The newsletter, edited by Rebecca Fowler, features links to recent media articles on Lamont science as well as stories on the work of Helga Gomes and Joaquim Goes on dinoflagellate blooms in the Arabian Sea, the monitoring by Beizhan Yan and James Ross of groundwater contamination by hydrofracturing operations in Pennsylvania, and the experiments by Kyle Frischkorn and Sonya Dyhrman on the molecular basis for brown-tide algal blooms along the eastern U.S. coast.
 
    On Wednesday, applications opened for Lamont Postdoctoral Fellowships for 2015-2016 (http://www.ldeo.columbia.edu/about-ldeo/office-director/postdoc-applications). The deadline for applications is 1 December, and selections will be made by our Postdoctoral Fellowship Committee (http://www.ldeo.columbia.edu/about-ldeo/organization/committees/postdoctoral-fellowship-committee), chaired this year by Billy D’Andrea.
 
    Lamont was extremely well represented at the reception in Low Library Wednesday afternoon hosted by Columbia University President Lee Bollinger to celebrate “Preeminence in Science: Achievement Strategy,” a report on the first 18 months of the university’s science initiative and its plans for the next five years. The event featured brief remarks by Bollinger, Provost John Coatsworth, Executive Vice President for Arts and Sciences David Madigan, Dean of Sciences Amber Miller, and Executive Vice President for Research Mike Purdy and provided opportunities for members of the Columbia University science community to discuss opportunities for enhanced collaboration across departmental and campus boundaries.
 
    Yesterday and today, Kerstin Lehnert co-convened a conference at AGU Headquarters in Washington, D.C., on Developing Data Practices for Earth Science Publications. The goals of the conference were to foster communication among editors and publishers of Earth Science journals, funding agencies, and Earth science data facilities; to develop, implement, and promote guidelines and practices for scholarly publishing; and to guide the development of a resource based on those guidelines to help authors and publishers support open data policies, facilitate proper data archiving, and support the linking of data to publications.
 
    New to Lamont’s website this week, in addition to multiple reminders of next week’s Open House, is a photo essay on the work of Max Cunningham, Colin Stark, and Mike Kaplan on the relative roles of tectonic uplift and glacial erosion in controlling the morphology of tropical mountain ranges (http://www.ldeo.columbia.edu/news-events/sculpting-tropical-peaks). On the Lamont Log (http://lamontlog.tumblr.com/) is a video, acquired from a drone operated by Einat Lev, of the summit of the active Shinmoedake volcano in southern Japan.
 
    Sonya Dyhrman’s group and others from Lamont will be participating this Sunday in SUBMERGE, the NYC Marine Science Festival. The goal of the event is to increase ocean science literacy, and the Lamont team hopes to raise awareness about marine research programs at the Observatory (http://www.hudsonriverpark.org/events/series/Submerge#Research Stations).
 
    Several Lamont scientists were in the news this week. A Christian Science Monitor story on Saturday includes a quote from Park Williams on the millennial context of the current drought in the western U.S. (http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/2014/0926/Rain-dampens-California-fires-but-more-drought-in-the-forecast-video). An article posted on Smithsonian.com Tuesday on the role of climate change in human evolution features the work of Peter deMenocal (http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/how-climate-change-may-have-shaped-human-evolution-180952885/). Also on Tuesday, a Live Science story of this weekend’s deadly eruption of the Ontake volcano in Japan includes a quote from Philipp Ruprecht on the predictability of different types of volcanic activity (http://www.livescience.com/48058-why-ontake-erupted-no-warning.html). Robin Bell was quoted in a Climate Central story Thursday on the influence of basal meltwater and ocean mixing on the seaward flow of ice sheets in Greenland (http://www.climatecentral.org/news/greenland-sediment-sea-level-rise-18115).
 
    Speaking of basal meltwater, Lamont has been host to a three-day workshop this week on subglacial hydrology organized by Tim Creyts. The workshop, which drew glaciologists from across the U.S. as well as Canada, Great Britain, Norway, and Switzerland, is part of an initiative to understand how the flow of basal water acts to enhance or diminish the rate of flow of overlying glaciers and ice sheets.
 
    Today’s Earth Science Colloquium by Gwenn Flowers, an Associate Professor who holds the Canada Research Chair in Glaciology in the Department of Earth Sciences at Simon Fraser University, will continue the icy theme. Gwenn will speak on “Climate versus ice dynamics: Exploring the drivers of glacier change through field-based studies in the St. Elias Mountains” (http://www.ldeo.columbia.edu/files/uploaded/image/file/Gwenn%20E%20Flowers.pdf). I hope to see you there.
 
       Sean