Mosaic September 2019: The largest Central Arctic expedition ever
The Expedition, https://www.mosaic-expedition.org/about-mosaic/the-expedition.html
In September 2019 the German research ice-breaker Polarstern will host 600 experts and researchers coming from 17 nations to make observations about the atmosphere-ice-ocean system that impacts the sea-ice mass and energy budget in the Arctic Ocean. The ship will be moored to a large ice floe and allowed to freeze-in for an entire year. The scientists will establish an ice camp around the ship to deploy sensors and collect samples throughout the next 12 months.
This extraordinary expedition is run by Mosaic International Arctic Drift Expedition organization.
EOAS graduate students receive GSA Graduate Student Research Grants
Nevin Kozik and Daniel Govert are graduate students in the the Geology PhD and MS programs, respectively, here in EOAS, both advised by Dr. Seth Young. Recently, Nevin and Dan were awarded Graduate Student Research Grants by the Geological Society of America. The primary role of the GSA research grant program is to provide partial support of master’s and doctoral thesis research in the geological sciences for graduate students enrolled in universities in the United States, Canada, Mexico and Central America.
EOAS undergrad receives honorable mention from the Dwornik Award
Steffanie Sillitoe-Kukas received honorable mention from the Dwornik Award for best undergraduate poster presented at the Lunar & Planetary Science Conference in Houston (2019). The Dwornik Award is presented annually to best student presentations by the Planetary Science Division of the Geological Society of America to encourage students to become involved with NASA and planetary science activities. There were 128 students who competed for the award in 2019. The complete list of 2019 winners is at:Dwornik Award – Planetary Geology Division .
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EOAS Graduates a Passel of PhD’s at the 2019 Commencement Ceremony.
Pictured here are students hooded at the May 2019 Commencement Ceremony, their major professors and Department Representative Alison Wing (in grey, back row right). Students, front row from left to right are: Matthew Ward (hooded by Mariana Fuentes, not shown), Lauren Gillies Campbell, (hooded by Dr. Olivia Mason (back row 2nd from left), Sarah Ellen Johnston, (hooded by Dr. Rob Spencer, back row middle), Brian Wells, John Kaba and Alireza Merikhi, (hooded by Dr. Markus Huettel (back row 4th from left), Ruikai Yan (hooded by Dr. Ming Cai, back row, right) and Mengtao Yin (a graduate of Dr. Guosheng Liu, hooded by Dr. Ming Cai).
EOAS postdoc, Dr. Anders Lindskog, awarded the Jan Bergström Young Geoscientist Award 2018
Anders Lindskog, EOAS postdoctoral fellow, has been selected for the Geological Society of Sweden Jan Bergström Young Geoscientist Award for 2018. This prestigious early career award is given annually to a geoscientist at the beginning of their career who through original research (peer-reviewed publications) has made significant contributions to the Earth Sciences. Anders received his PhD in geology from Lund University, Sweden in the spring of 2017.
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Dr. Allison Wing – Rooting out the errors in storm simulation models
On the eve of every hurricane season, climatologists around the world offer their studied prognostications: Will we see high activity? Low activity? How will ocean temperature affect storm development? What are the chances of a powerful storm making landfall?
Scientists have leveraged improved climate models to simulate tropical cyclone behavior with an ever-increasing degree of accuracy, but basic modeling errors continue to limit the reliability of their forecasts.
Now, researchers from Florida State University, Columbia University and the University of Washington are working with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to root out those nagging errors. With the support of a $500,000 grant from the NOAA Research, Modeling, Analysis, Predictions and Projections Program (MAPP), the team will develop diagnostic tools to identify the hidden biases that compromise high-powered climate models.
FSU Grad Ada Monzon wins 2019 AMS Award for Broadcast Meteorology
Ada Monzon, who earned an MS degree with Dr. Sharon Nicholson, is the 2019 winner of the AMS Award for Broadcast Meteorology for her long-term commitment to informing, educating, and inspiring resiliency in the people of Puerto Rico before, during, and after extreme events like Hurricane Maria.
Ms. Monzon won the AMS Joanne Simpson Mentorship Award in 2016 and was elected an AMS Fellow in 2013.
Honors in the Major, Environmental Science and Environmental Science and Policy.
This year (2017-2018) four undergraduates completed honor’s theses, earning the Honors in the Major distinction. Dr. Jeff Chanton is the adviser for this program (jchanton@fsu.edu).
To do this, an undergraduate student in their junior year would find a faculty advisor and do a project under their direction. see https://honors.fsu.edu/honors-major
“We are all very proud of Mainak’s award. This is a very competitive award and it speaks highly of Mainak’s research program here at FSU,” stated Prof. James Tull, Chair of the EOAS Department.
The Earth Materials Laboratory led by Prof. Mookherjee examines the behaviors of minerals, melts, and fluids, at conditions relevant to the Earth and Planetary interiors. The Powe award to Mookherjee will support neutron scattering measurements at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory to characterize atomistic scale structure of minerals at conditions relevant to the Earth’s interior. Prior to joining FSU in 2016, Dr. Mookherjee was a Research Scientist at the Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, Cornell University. He earned his PhD in Earth Sciences at the University of Cambridge, UK. He has held research positions at the University of Michigan, Yale University, and Bayerisches Geoinstitute in Bayreuth, Germany. (more…)
Marine Fields Methods Class Goes to Sea
The Marine Field Methods class had its field week earlier this month. They worked from the FSU Marine Lab’s pontoon boat for several days. Two students, Taylor Kirkpatrick and Linoj Vijayan, are part of the EOAS Aquatics degree program. (more…)
Several EOAS undergrad students participated in Undergraduate Research Opportunity Program (UROP) this year at FSU. The program provides high-achieving students with the opportunity to conduct research 5-10 hours a week assisting a faculty member, Ph.D. student, or company; meet bi-monthly with a UROP Student Leader and fellow UROP students; receive personalized guidance about research and campus resources; and present at the annual undergraduate research symposium. (more…)
Rare Jurassic Fossils Discovered
A trove of exceptionally well preserved fossils has been discovered at Ya Ha Tinda Ranch near Banff National Park, helping to expand scientists’ knowledge of marine life that existed here more than 180 million years ago.
And an EOAS researcher was part of the discovery team. Benjamin Gill, a professor at Virginia Tech was talking with Theodore Them, an EOAS Arts & Sciences Fellow postdoc, when he noticed Theodore standing right on top of a lobster. They looked around and discovered fossils all around them. (more…)
Dr. Allison Wing joined the EOAS faculty in January 2017. Before arriving at FSU, she completed a postdoctoral research fellowship at Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory and received her Ph.D. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dr. Wing is an atmospheric scientist who studies tropical convection, tropical cyclones, and climate.
One of her research foci is the organization of tropical convection; an example of a tropical cloud cluster is shown in the accompanying image. Dr. Wing is an expert on the phenomenon of self-aggregation, which is the tendency of tropical clouds to spontaneously clump together solely due to interactions between the clouds and the surrounding environment. Self-aggregation occurs in numerical model simulations of an imaginary patch of the tropical atmosphere, and one of Dr. Wing’s current areas of research involves determining exactly how the behavior seen in numerical models is borne out in the real world. Organized convection contributes significantly to tropical rainfall and cloudiness, and, when clouds cluster together more, they change the amount of cloudiness and humidity in the surrounding large-scale environment. Therefore, the behavior of tropical convection is essential to understanding tropical and global climate and climate sensitivity. (more…)
Chlorite Dehydration Explains High Electrical Conductivity in Mantle Wedges
Subduction zones are characterized by significant geological activities including arc volcanism and earthquakes. At subduction zone settings, hydrated crusts are subducted into the mantle. This releases fluids and rehydrates mantle wedges. It also provides an additional source of aqueous fluid above the slab causing melting and eventually arc volcanism. Often, mantle wedge regions are characterized by anomalously high electrical conductivity signals. Geophysicists have been invoking aqueous fluids with enhanced salinity to explain such observations. (more…)