American Geophysical Union 2015: Key Earth Institute Events

Scientists at Columbia University’s Earth Institute will present important findings at the American Geophysical Union fall 2015 meeting, Dec. 14-18 in San Francisco–the world’s largest gathering of earth and space scientists. Unless otherwise noted, presenters are at our Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory. Abstracts are in the AGU meeting program.  Reporters may contact scientists directly. More info: Senior science editor Kevin Krajick, [email protected] 917-361-7766.

North American Diamonds: What Is Their Origin?   Yaakov Weiss
In the 1990s, rich diamond mines were discovered in the tundra of Canada’s Northwest Territories. A continent-wide search continues for more. Weiss has studied tiny fluid inclusions within some of the Canadian diamonds, which shed light on the conditions under which they formed. The results could apply to other parts of North America, and the world.
Monday, Dec. 14, 8:00am-12:20pm, Moscone South Posters.    V11C-3072
Story/photo essay on North American diamonds and Weiss’s work

Humidity May Magnify Killer Heat
Ethan Coffel & Radley Horton, Center for Climate Systems Research 
Heat is the world’s leading weather-related killer, but most future projections leave out a huge magnifier: the added effects of humidity. Using new global projections of “wet bulb” temperature–combined heat/humidity—the scientists suggest that by mid-century, regions populated by hundreds of millions could see potentially fatal conditions never encountered by modern people. The heat would affect not just health, but infrastructure, power generation and economies. Large areas could become essentially uninhabitable. The team looks specifically at the U.S. East Coast, India, West Africa and eastern China.
Monday, Dec. 14, 8am-12:20pm, Moscone South Posters.   GC11A-1016
PRESS CONFERENCE: Monday, Dec. 14, 5pm: Impacts of Heat Stress on Densely Populated Areas in the 21^st Century. With Coffel, Horton and Noah Diffenbaugh (Stanford University).

Restoring Arctic Sea Ice  Stephanie Pfirman
The ongoing loss of Arctic sea ice is a well-known story—but that is not the end of the story, say Pfirman and colleagues. They do a thought experiment asking what it would take to bring the ice back. The next few generations will inevitably see ice-free summers, but aggressive action against climate change could start restoration by maybe 2100, with reductions in greenhouse gases, large-scale carbon sequestration and geoengineering to cool the atmosphere. Sea ice provides worldwide benefits—reflecting heat back into space, buttressing the Greenland ice sheet, and possibly stabilizing weather patterns–so, the political constituency for restoring the ice may extend to cities and nations across the globe.
Monday, Dec. 14, 8:00am-12:20pm, Moscone South Posters.   GC11G-1087
Article on ‘The Last Sea Ice Refuge’

 Possible Extraterrestrial Impact off East Africa   Dallas Abbott
Geologist Dallas Abbott and her colleagues are investigating whether an asteroid or comet struck the Indian Ocean in human time, producing a megatsunami that struck Africa. Up to now, the main evidence has been the presence of unusual gigantic dunes on Madagascar; but skeptics say these could have been formed in other ways. Abbott presents new geochemical evidence that the dunes indeed were formed by a tsunami origin; she expects to report a date for the event.
Monday, Dec. 14, 8:00am-12:20pm, Moscone South Posters.   NH11A-1883
2006 New York Times article on Abbott’s work

Battling Vector-Borne Diseases from Space
Pietro Ceccato, International Research Institute for Climate and Society (IRI)
Ceccato explores a new NASA initiative to develop remote-sensing tools to help predict outbreaks of climate-sensitive African diseases including malaria, trypanosomiasis (sleeping sickness), leishmaniasis and schistosomiasis. Increasingly sophisticated monitoring and analyses of temperature, vegetation, water bodies and flooding are now making it practical to make areas suffering from these diseases more resilient. Examples from South Africa, Zimbabwe, Tanzania and Malawi.
Monday, Dec. 14, 8:00am-12:20pm, Moscone South Posters.   GC11H-1116
Ceccato explains in a 1-minute podcast

 Why Are Scientists Holding Back on Sea Level Projections?
James Hansen, Climate Science, Awareness and Solutions
Hansen coauthored a widely discussed paper this year that projects sea levels could surge up to 10 feet this century. He will discuss what he sees as the dangers of scientists’ reluctance to seriously consider such bold assertions. (He has based his estimates in part on accumulating evidence that the great ice sheets are undergoing the start of an accelerating collapse—the elephant in the room left out of many other projections.)
Monday, Dec. 14, 1:40-2:00pm, 102 Moscone South.   U13A-01
Hansen’s warning on rapid sea-level rise

 New Evidence of Caribbean Tsunami Potential    Belle Philibosian
Following the 2010 Haiti earthquake, researchers considered whether other Caribbean areas might generate earthquakes that could threaten the coasts of the Americas with tsunamis. Contrary to previous findings, Philibosian presents new evidence that the outermost islands might present such a threat. Studies of corals in the lesser Antilles show the islands have subsided during the 20^th century–motion that suggests strain building on the seabed that could lift a tsunami when released. By contrast, recent GPS measurements suggest little motion—but GPS data present only part of the picture, and go back only about 10 years.
Monday, Dec. 14, 2:55-3:10pm, 104 Moscone South.   T13F-06 

 Did Greenland Melt to Bedrock?   Joerg Schaefer
Despite evidence of big climate swings in the last 2.5 million years, many scientists think the Greenland ice sheet has never completely melted. Schaefer and his colleagues say there is new evidence, in the bedrock below the deepest ice, that the sheet disappeared for at least 10,000 years. Using state-of the art techniques to analyze samples drilled out in the 1990s, they have found cosmogenic isotopes indicating exposure to open air. This suggests the ice sheet may be more unstable than many think.
Monday, Dec. 14, 5:00-5:15pm, 3005 Moscone West.   GC14C-05

 Undersea Volcanoes, Ice Sheets and Sea Level   Wallace Broecker
This year, two controversial papers looked at how undersea volcanoes, sea levels, and volcanoes and ice sheets on land may interact to produce cyclic seesaw shifts in earth’s climate. Even within Lamont, the hypothesis is debated by separate groups. Broecker—one of the founders of modern climate science–synthesizes the evidence and discusses his own ideas. Part of a larger session on the issue.
Tuesday, Dec. 15, 5:45-6pm, 102 Moscone South.   V24-08
Paper linking climate to seafloor processes
Paper de-linking climate from seafloor processes
RELATED: Broecker presents results of Iceland’s CarbFix project to mineralize CO2 underground. Thurs., Dec. 17, 8am-12:20pm, Moscone South Posters.   H41C-1315

 The Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory Party   
Traditionally on Tuesday night, Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory and Columbia’s Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences gather staff, and alumni now at other institutions worldwide. Journalists covering AGU are welcome—a chance to make friends, hear informally about new work and have fun.
Tuesday Dec 15, 6:30pm-8:30pm (or beyond), San Francisco Marriott Union Square, 480 Sutter Street, Union Square Ballroom

 Arctic Pollutants on Thin Ice   Robert Newton
Winter ice isn’t disappearing from the Arctic; it’s just getting thinner, and that makes it more mobile than the multiyear ice that used to dominate many regions. Because currents now push ice faster and farther, this is increasing the flow of pollutants, nutrients and microorganisms across national boundaries. Newton examines the political and environmental implications of transnational sea-ice export and import. Materials that might be transported more efficiently include nickel and mercury from smelting plants in Siberia, and seed populations of microbes that could establish themselves in unfamiliar regions.
Wednesday, Dec. 16, 9:45-10am, 103 Moscone South.    PA31D-08

 Drones over Polar Seas   Christopher Zappa *
Unmanned aerial vehicles are being used for a widening range of scientific applications. Zappa covers their first use to study the intricacies of Arctic sea ice and water, starting with a pilot project off Norway’s Svalbard archipelago this past summer. Drone imagery is providing otherwise unavailable close-up views of ice albedo, roughness, air-sea-ice fluxes and other parameters. Drone flights are not only producing spectacular new images, but dropping tiny instruments into the icepack that report back to base. (*Zappa is currently on an Antarctic research vessel, deploying instruments. Another session member will probably give his talk, but he may be contacted by email.)
Thursday, Dec. 17, 9:30-9:45am, 302 Moscone South.  NH41E-07
Climate Central story on pilot project  

 Lava Lakes: Windows into Earth’s Fiery Insides   Einat Lev
Persistently open, roiling lakes of lava are rare; only about a half dozen are currently known. Lev and colleagues are studying them in three volcanic craters: Hawaii’s Kilauea, Antarctica’s Mount Erebus, and the Democratic Republic of Congo’s Nyiragongo. Because they can be observed visually (although at some risk to researchers), they offer direct windows into the magmatic processes that drive volcanic eruptions, rifting and the formation of crust. Lev has been documenting Kilauea’s Halemaumau crater in particular, and will discuss her latest findings, with moving images from the crater.
Friday, Dec. 18, 8am-12:20pm, Moscone South Posters.   V51D-3060
Story, slideshow & video on Lev’s work  

 Antarctic Warming: Natural, Not Human-Caused?   Karen Smith
West Antarctica, especially the rapidly warming Antarctic Peninsula, has been held up as a poster child for human-driven climate change. Here, Smith makes what may be a controversial case that this warming is actually the result of natural multi-decadal-scale cycles of sea-surface temperatures and sea ice—not human-induced global warming. She bases her conclusions on examinations of 40 climate models going back to the 1970s.
Friday, Dec. 18, 9:28-9:40am, 3008 Moscone West.   A51V-07

Discovering Giant Landslides Using Seismology   Colin Stark
Stark and colleagues have shown that massive landslides can be detected in real time by the seismic waves they produce. This opens a new field of study, since many slides occur in remote areas where they otherwise might not detected in a timely way, if at all. Stark will discuss his team’s discovery of multi-kilometer slides across the world from Tibet to the Yukon, some of which have previously never been reported. The technique is already yielding insights into the physics of giant landslides, and was applied to rescue operations after the recent Nepal earthquake.
Friday Dec 18, 9:45-10:00am, 2005 Moscone West.  EP51D-08
Article on the new method  Massive slide detected in Alaska
NASA images of the latest slide

 An App That Dives Deep Into Sea Level   Margie Turrin
Turrin demos a new app that offers viewers a sophisticated but accessible look at sea-level rise and its causes around the world. The question-driven interactive app offers multilayered maps, text and audio that address the roles of ice, atmosphere and movements of land.  Part of a session on “Amazing Games and Superb Simulations for Science Education.”
Friday, Dec. 18, 2:25-2:40pm, 303 Moscone South.   ED53F-04