This one hits hard. A 2015 GC PhD, Derrick Griffith, was killed in the Amtrak train derailment on Tuesday. Dr. Griffith was 42 years old and had a distinguished career already as an educator. Going back to school in your 30’s to get a PhD is not easy.
I’ve been reading the classic Climate, History and the Modern World by H.H. Lamb, and really enjoying the take on how changing climate has influenced history.
When I teach my classes, I try very hard to make my course intellectually rigorous, intellectually stimulating, and relevant to the students. But that doesn’t mean it can’t also be fun.
In Collapse, Jared Diamond implicated long-term climate change in the collapse of the Anasazi society, blaming it on consistent La Niña-like conditions during the MCA (which would have featured much lower Eastern Tropical Pacific variability, were this the case). In Late Victorian Holocausts, Mike Davis implicates the strong El Niños in 1876-77 and 1881-82 as […]
It’s been a bit snowy in NYC this winter, and more is on the way. Just for fun, I took a quick peek at NYC snowfall data for Central Park, which goes back to 1868. Here’s some interesting info:
I actually get a little bit upset when people look at the latest weather phenomenon to argue for or against climate change. Weather is not climate, and although weather is certainly influenced by climate, attribution remains a problem. The (statistical) likelihood that certain event will occur, or the severity and duration of those events, is […]
AGU2013 was full of good feedback this year – from q-q plots to the role of the ITCZ in modulating ENSO variability to having less text on your poster (!). Even the feedback from the OSPA was useful, if not terribly complete or consistent. According to that, I am personable and a good presenter, and […]
First, I should be updating this more often than I do. I will do more of this. Second, the good news is that we’ve been generating a lot more data. This has been facilitated by use of both the Kiel Delta IV AND the Isoprime at LDEO, and we’ve been getting good results (for the […]
It’s AGU time! This year’s science pilgrimage to San Francisco will be quite exciting. I’m presenting a poster on my main research this year, and it will be the public unveiling of my current findings. The field isn’t that large, so first impressions will be very important. We have some good data, so I think […]
Many scientists are actually quite fun and funny people, and can sometimes be quite well-rounded. This is pretty apparent in this list of gene names in the genome of Drosophila, our little fruit fly friend.
