This week was notable for several reasons. The autumnal equinox marked a change in seasons. Two spacecraft, one launched earlier by the U.S. and one by India, were independently inserted into orbit about Mars on Sunday and Tuesday, respectively. But the central topic of the week was climate change.
Climate Week NYC was kicked off Sunday by the People’s Climate March, which included many from Lamont. Robin Bell, Etienne Dunn-Sigouin, Allison Jacobel, and Franziska Landes, as well as IRI’s Alessandra Giannini appeared in photos in the coverage of the march by Popular Science (http://www.popsci.com/article/science/why-these-15-scientists-marched-climate-change-action). A story on the event in Scientific American included quotes from marcher Peter deMenocal (http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/science-shows-up-in-force-at-people-s-climate-march/). Peter’s outreach hat trick also included an interview on Science Friday last week (http://www.sciencefriday.com/segment/09/19/2014/the-people-s-march-against-climate-change.html) and a talk on climate science at the International Center of Photography on Monday (http://www.icp.org/events/2014/september/22/what-climate-science-peter-demenocal).
Several of Lamont’s research divisions have recently welcomed visitors. Ting Zhang arrived on Monday as a part-time Staff Associate in the Geochemistry Division. Ting is a graduate student at Nanjing University. With support from the China Scholarship Council, she will be visiting Lamont for the next two years to work with Beizhan Yan and Steve Chillrud on a study of personal health outcomes following exposure to air pollutants and secondhand smoke in China.
Another visitor to Geochemistry who arrived this week is Jaime Frigola, a paleoclimatologist from the Marine Geoscience Research Group at the Universitat de Barcelona. Jaime will spend a month at Lamont and will be hosted by Leo Pena.
The Ocean and Climate Physics Division this week welcomed Ewelina Sienkiewicz, a Ph.D. candidate in statistics from the London School of Economics and Political Science. Ewelina holds a Master of Science degree in Computer Science and Econometrics from the University of Szczecin in Poland. She will be visiting Lamont for two months to work with Mark Cane on the nonlinear behavior and predictability of the Cane-Zebiak model for El-Niño Southern Oscillation events.
Céline Grall joined the Marine Geology and Geophysics Division last week as a Postdoctoral Research Scientist. Céline came to Lamont from Perpignan University, where she held a lecturer appointment following completion of her Ph.D. last year at Aix-Marseille University under the supervision of Pierre Henry and Louis Géli. Her thesis was a study of fault evolution and fluid flow along the North Anatolian Fault in the Sea of Marmara. At Lamont, she will be working with Mike Steckler on the analysis of subsidence, compaction, and flexure in the Ganges-Brahmaputra Delta, Bangladesh.
Earlier this month, geologist Wolfram Kürschner began a four-month visit at Lamont’s Biology and Paleo Environment Division to work with Paul Olsen on links between paleoatmospheric CO2, climate, and vegetation. A Professor in the Department of Geosciences at the University of Oslo, Wolfram writes “I am interested in the fossil record of plants and algae and the interaction between Earth’s biological and physical systems. I use a range of laboratory and field techniques at the interface between biology and geology in order to interpret morphological and geochemical patters in fossil plant remains.”
The R/V Langseth continued collecting seismic data this week as part of the Eastern North American Margin (ENAM) community seismic experiment to determine the structure of the rifted margin formed at the opening of the Atlantic Ocean. An informative map of the two-ship choreography by which this experiment is being conducted off the coast of North Carolina was posted yesterday on the ENAM blog site (http://www.ldeo.columbia.edu/research/blogs/enam-seismic-experiment).
Lamont was featured in several media stories in addition to those tied explicitly to Climate Week. In The New York Times on Tuesday, an article on the impact of drought on the livelihoods of nomadic herders in Mongolia included quotes from Nicole Davi and Neil Pederson (http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/23/science/its-not-genghis-khans-mongolia.html?_r=2&emc=rss&partner=rss). Robert Daly, who in addition to his Lamont job serves as Sparkill’s Assistant Fire Chief, was featured in a (Rockland) Journal News story Wednesday about his rescue Tuesday of a hiker who fell and injured herself on one of our local trails (http://www.lohud.com/story/news/local/rockland/2014/09/23/hiker-rescued-palisades-interestate-park-fall/16124721/). That same day, Nyack News & Views posted a Kim Martineau story on Lamont’s Open House, scheduled for October 11, only two weeks from now (http://www.nyacknewsandviews.com/2014/09/58046/). On The Lamont Log is a National Geographic video of Bob Newton’s work with high school interns in his Secondary School Field Research Program on the invasive species Phragmites australis that now dominates the plant populations in local marshes (http://lamontlog.tumblr.com/).
On Wednesday next week, Columbia University President Lee Bollinger will host a reception celebrating “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 will feature 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. The reception, to be held in Low Library from 5 to 7 pm, is by invitation only, but all those invited are encouraged to attend to demonstrate the strong support by this campus of Columbia’s science initiative.
From Wednesday to Friday of next week, Tim Creyts will host a workshop at Lamont on subglacial hydrology. The workshop, which will draw an international group of glaciologists, is part of an initiative to understand how the flow of water at the base of glaciers and ice sheets acts to enhance or diminish the rate of flow of the overlying ice. A coda to the workshop will be next week’s Earth Science Colloquium by Gwenn Flowers, an Associate Professor and holder of the Canada Research Chair in Glaciology in the Department of Earth Sciences at Simon Fraser University.
Today’s Colloquium will be given by Columbia and Lamont alumna Sarah Feakins, now an Assistant Professor in the Department of Earth Sciences at the University of Southern California (http://earth.usc.edu/feakins/). Sarah will be speaking on “Biomarker reconstructions of vegetation and hydrology” across South America, from the high Andes to the Amazon basin” (http://www.ldeo.columbia.edu/files/uploaded/image/file/Sarah%20J%20Feakins.pdf). Immediately following the colloquium, there will be a ceremony on the lawn between the Monell and Oceanography buildings to dedicate the new wooden bench crafted in memory of John Diebold (who is featured in today’s Field Photo Friday on The Lamont Log). The dedication ceremony will segue to a special “TGIF” event, featuring musical numbers by the American Standard String Band. I hope to see you at both events.
Sean