This week marks the world’s largest annual gathering of earth and space scientists: the five-day December meeting of the American Geophysical Union. There will be about 18,000 of them, spread across two giant San Francisco convention halls giving talks and discussing the latest in their fields. Scores of researchers from the Earth Institute will be involved. Among many other things, they will give presentations on the destruction of Antarctic ice by warming oceans (from Douglas Martinson, Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory); clues contained in ancient trees as to how climate change may affect New York City (Neil Pederson of Lamont); an examination of India’s water crisis (Shama Perveen of the Columbia Water Center); and fast-growing “hotspots” of potential weather-related disasters in the Caribbean” (Bob Chen, director of the Center for International Earth Science Information Network).
On brighter notes, William Ryan and colleagues at Lamont will demo a new mobile app called Earth Observer, scheduled to be released this week at the Apple iTunes store, which gives the general public access to fabulous graphics and information about the earth previously tapped mainly by scientists. There is also the traditional Lamont-Doherty alumni party, held every year on Tuesday night at AGU—a gathering that reunites top scientists from across the world who studied at Lamont.
Check out our press advisory for journalists , detailing just a few of the significant and interesting talks from Earth Institute staff: http://www.earth.columbia.edu/articles/view/2637.
