Earth and climate scientists return to the wild

Making up for lost time: Earth and climate scientists return to the wild

In the northeastern part of Umnak Island in the eastern Aleutian Islands of Alaska, the Okemok Crater issued a warning signal. Okmok is one of the most active volcanoes in the Aleutian island chain.

In late July, a normally dormant cone steamed hot, which raised concerns about new activities that could lead to the eruption of a shield volcano that is more than 6 miles wide.Columbia University Lamont-Dougherty Earth Observatory Nick Frearson, the co-chief researcher engineer of AVERT (Real-time Predicting Volcano Eruption), finally put on his boots on the ground and took a helicopter directly above the cone to observe carefully.

Due to the global pandemic blockade, he and Lamont graduate student Jasper Bauer continued the AVERT operation in Alaska, which had been suspended for more than a year. AVERT aims to create the first open-data, real-time, multi-sensor community experiment on active volcanoes. By advancing the development of eruption prediction, it will directly benefit 800 million people living within 60 miles of active volcanoes.

For the past five weeks, Frelson and Ball have been working on the crater with scientists from the Alaska Volcano Observatory, installing carbon dioxide sensors and temperature sensors underground. This will enable scientists to measure the carbon dioxide and temperature signals leaking from the ground for the first time, and use a year-round time series to test whether the ground is warming before the eruption.

Lamont volcanologist Terry Planck is the lead researcher. For her and the AVERT team, the delay of the pandemic has been frustrating. “Our entire first summer season (2020) has been cancelled, so this summer is our first time entering the stadium. We can only work there in the summer, so this [the pandemic lock down] It was a major delay. “

Planck’s team is not alone. At Lamont, the world’s leading earth and climate science research company, as the consequences of climate change are exacerbating crises around the world, the pandemic has forced critical field work to stop for several months-Three-digit temperature In the Pacific Northwest, floods in Germany and China, and the record-breaking west Wildfire.

When the world desperately needed answers, the pandemic forced observations and research on the earth system and climate change to abruptly cease. According to data from the National Science Foundation (NSF), about 90% of the 150 international Arctic projects funded by the agency canceled field research visits in the spring and summer of 2020, covering the fields of natural, physical, and social sciences.

Arthur Lerner-Rahm, Special Advisor Columbia Climate School, And also coordinated Lamont’s pandemic response. “The loss caused by the interruption of field work is immeasurable, especially if it leads to gaps in the observation of the data time series. Most of our understanding of the loss of polar ice, ocean currents and circulation changes, animal migration or atmospheric pollution depends on Continuous observation. For example, most of the 2020-2021 Antarctic wild season is lost. The long-term observation gap cannot be made up.”

Lamont’s wild season usually involves as many as 50 to 60 expeditions. These expeditions take researchers to all corners of the world-from exploring climate-related Polar ice changes arrive Sampling deep in the seafloor. This spring and summer, as pandemic restrictions began to lift, few on-site teams started to set off, starting from where they stopped.

Lamont marine biologist Ajit Subramaniam was one of Lamont’s first nautical studies. For three years, he has been studying the flow of the Amazon River into the ocean, exploring whether and how changes in the Amazon River Basin—especially the increase in farmland in Brazil by deforestation—affect the marine microbiota. This is a very important scientific question that needs to be answered. Billions of tiny organisms in the ocean form the main sink of carbon dioxide (the most common greenhouse gas) in the atmosphere.

Although his journey to study the effects of the outflow of the Amazon River was not delayed by the pandemic, it was full of pandemic-related complications, adding weeks to sailing times.

The plan is to depart from Brazilian ports. March 2021 is the deadliest period in the country. At least 1 in every 382 Brazilian residents has died of COVID-19. Brazil travel restrictions forced a change of route.

Photo: Ajit Subramaniam

“We left [instead] From the Canary Islands”, this is the southernmost European port where his German colleague was allowed to join the ship. In addition, none of the Brazilian collaborators were allowed to fly to Europe, thus jeopardizing the permit for sampling in Brazilian waters.” This led to last-minute tensions over whether we could work near the mouth of the Amazon River, and also extended the sailing time by almost a month as we crossed the Atlantic Ocean from the Canary Islands to the Amazon. Then when we finished our work, we returned to Germany all the way from the western tropical Atlantic. “

The early resumption of field work has brought other types of challenges. For many (if not most) scientists, the first field trip is the first return to the world.

Subramaniam’s long journey to Amazon began on March 30, 2021, from his apartment in the Upper West Side. He took Lyft to Newark International Airport and took an evening flight to Frankfurt, Germany. He said the one-stop shop at Washington Dulles Airport “frightened him” because there were too many people. This is the first time he has seen so many people since March 2020. The plane itself was also packed with people, further exacerbating Subramaniam’s anxiety.

At the same time, his colleagues are traveling from various places in the United States and around the world. They are racing against time to establish contact and arrive in Frankfurt within 48 hours. In that window, a negative COVID-19 test will allow them to enter. country.

For Subramaniam, his COVID test on hand was negative and his connection was perfect. But when a colleague in Tuscon, Arizona missed her connecting flight, the pressure came.

Despite some tension, Subramaniam and his 22 collaborators all arrived in Germany and then underwent a two-week strict quarantine in a German hotel.

“We couldn’t leave the room for two weeks; they tested us every three days. Two weeks later, they let us take a special car to the private airport, and then take a special plane to fly to the Canary Islands,” he said.

Research team on the bus to the airport. Photo: Ajit Subramaniam

Going to sea for more than 60 days brings other epidemic-related challenges.

“It’s really hard to work on a boat with a mask. The weather is very hot, it’s difficult to breathe, and you are doing very strenuous manual labor,” Subramaniam said. This work involved inserting a large equipment called a CTD rosette at different depths at 60 locations along the route.

The team returned on June 2. The cruise was a success and produced an important collection of samples that are still being analyzed. Subramaniam actually attributed the pandemic-related detours to the expansion of the project’s reach. “It improves the science, because for me, if I had the opportunity to cross the subtropical Atlantic all the way to sample…otherwise I wouldn’t do it.”

This benefit is an exception to delays related to the pandemic.

Work on the boat. Photo: Ajit Subramaniam

On the west coast of the United States, about 5,100 miles from the Amazon, Lamont marine geologist Suzanne Carbotte led a team from Columbia University, University of Texas Institute of Geophysics, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute, University of Washington, and Oregon State University/National The Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration performed a 40-day mission in the Cascadia subduction zone. This was after the expedition was postponed for a whole year.

Carbotte and team members Recorded this trip.

Carbotte explained: “This subduction zone is the location of’giant thrust’ earthquakes in the past. These earthquakes are the largest earthquakes on the planet, but they are currently very quiet. There is almost no seismic activity detected from Oregon to Washington.”

“Scientists believe that this lack of seismic activity reflects the current’locked’ state of the giant thrust fault. As the Juan de Fuca plate system continues to dive (subduct) below North America, pressure quietly accumulates. Fully or partially accumulated The pressure will eventually be released in the next major earthquake.”

During the cruise, the team used sound to probe the bottom of the seafloor, looking for a giant thrust fault that covers the depths of several kilometers of sediments in the downward Juan de Fuca plate. This is the first seismic imaging study in history that spans almost the entire Cascadia subduction zone.

Carbotte commented that she and the team are very happy to be back at sea and engage in research that is vital to the earth. “The last major earthquake in Cascadia occurred on January 26, 1700, with an estimated magnitude of 9—similar to the devastating earthquake in northeastern Japan in 2011.”

When answering key questions about earthquakes, volcanoes, marine biology, and polar ice, is it possible to make up for wasted time?

Lerner-Lam pointed out that the advent of real-time technology has helped prevent losses. “For example, weather satellites, earthquake monitoring, and floating ocean buoys continue to operate throughout the pandemic. When maintenance personnel cannot go to the instrument site, problems sometimes occur, but these losses are small.”

However, he said that “down to earth” is irreplaceable, especially when conducting scientific investigations in remote areas. “If we want to understand the rapid changes in climate, weather, and environment that are happening on our planet, returning to normal is still crucial.”

Planck said that the AVERT project has lost some important foundations. “The main setback is that students and postdoctoral fellows are looking for jobs.” Planck is worried about losing talent because promising postdoctoral researchers are forced to engage in work other than geoscience research.

Subramaniam puts it this way: “On a global scale, we have stopped grasping the pulse of the earth for several months. Satellites have been working. Sensors have been working. But humans are not here to make measurements that only humans can do.”

Lamont expects that more fieldwork projects will advance this fall, all of which are being closely monitored by Colombia’s strict COVID acceleration policy.

“We are looking for [forward] As the global vaccination campaign progresses and as we learn more about the virus and its variants, Lamont’s intense field work has gradually intensified,” Lerner-Rahm said. “If we want to understand us The rapid changes in climate, weather and environment that are taking place on the planet are still essential to return to normal. “