Posts filed under ‘College of Earth and Mineral Sciences’
Meet Your Future Volcanologists
We got a great email the other day from Joshua Pechter ’97, an alum who lives in Atlanta with his wife Meredith Carr Pechter ’98 and their four young children. We figured our readers would get a kick out of it. Here’s part of the note:
“My twin boys love volcanoes. While some boys idolize their favorite sports heroes, my guys love geologists — including Pete LaFemina, an assistant professor of geoscienes at Penn State. Pete is featured on a History Channel program called How the Earth Was Made. In an attempt to be cool to my kids, I wrote Pete an email… A few weeks later, we got a response. From Panama, Pete replied that he had carried with him lava from our favorite volcano, Hekla in Iceland, which would be sent to our boys when he got back to the U.S. My twins were over the moon.”
Not long after, we got a follow-up email, with this photo attached:
Good stuff, huh?
You can catch Pete LaFemina on How the Earth Was Made, including this complete episode on the History Channel website (he first shows up in the episode’s second segment.) And I imagine in 20 years or so, we might be seeing the Pechter twins with a volcano show of their own.
Ryan Jones, senior editor
Michael Mann Cleared in “Climategate” Case
Almost eight months after launching its inquiry, Penn State has cleared Michael Mann of any ethical or academic misconduct in his climate research. You can read the University’s release on the findings here, including a link to the full report from the panel of scholars who carried out the inquiry. You can also read how some of country’s biggest papers covered the story here, here, and here. Among the facts noted is that the Penn State panel interviewed researchers who have been critical of Mann’s work; as the New York Times’ “Dot Earth” blog sums up, “months of sifting … files by an army of passionate critics have revealed little more than signs he is a prickly, competitive, defensive scientist — hardly a rare species.”
In February, Mann was cleared of most allegations in a case that has become an international symbol of the contentious debate over global climate change.
Ryan Jones, senior editor
Guest Post: Underneath the Eyjafjallajökull Volcano
Nancy Marie Brown took this photo in Iceland in April.
Editor’s note: The July-August issue of The Penn Stater has a story about Iceland’s Eyjafjallajökull volcano, which began spewing ash in April and wreaked havoc on farms and towns—as well as on international air travel. The piece was written by Nancy Marie Brown ’81, ’85 MA Lib, who lives in Vermont but is a regular visitor to Iceland—and who flew over to Iceland to see the volcano.
Iceland sits on a hot spot where two tectonic plates are drifting apart, making it one of the most volcanically active places on earth, with an eruption about every five years. For scientists, the island is a kind of volcano laboratory whose results apply around the world.
Nancy talked to Kristin Vogfjörd ’86 MS, ’91 PhD EMS, a research seismologist and chief project manager at the Icelandic Meteorological Office; part of Vogfjörd’s job is finding better ways to predict earthquakes and volcanic eruptions.
Here’s what Vogfjörd told Nancy.
When did you first notice the volcano under Eyjafjallajökull was waking up?
We’ve been watching the progress of this lava coming up through the crust of the earth since 1994. We had a swarm of really deep earthquakes at the base of the crust, about 22 kilometers down, in 1996. Usually you don’t have earthquakes that low. Quakes happen when rock breaks, and the rock that deep in the crust is warm and yielding. It bends instead of breaking. The only way you can induce quakes that deep is if you’re forcing magma—molten lava—in from beneath.
Photo by Nancy Marie Brown
In 1999 there was another series of events that ended in a pool of magma at 6 kilometers down. Then there seemed to be a gap and we got seismic activity up even higher. We think the lava was pooling in between these clusters of earthquakes.
For two months before this last eruption, there was a lot of seismicity. We had 1,000 earthquakes per week, as the lava found its way to the top. On our maps, you can see it forming a dike, then a pipe. It comes up to about 2 kilometers deep and then propagates eastward. The earthquakes were at the spot where the lava was upwelling, but the eruption at first was a little to the north.
How do you “watch” lava moving when it’s 6 kilometers beneath the surface?
It’s like a CAT scan. First you need an array of seismometers. We have a lot of monitors on Reykjanes, a peninsula in the west of Iceland—the power companies paid for them. We have some in the north near Lake Myvatn and some near the Vatnajökull glacier. We would like to have some in other areas, but they’re expensive. We have six in the south around Eyjafjallajökull, including one on the Westman Islands.
Second, you need a lot of tiny earthquakes. For example, between 1991 and 2006, we recorded 860 earthquakes under Eyjafjallajökull.
When an earthquake occurs, you divide the earth into boxes and calculate how long it takes for the waves from that earthquake to get to all the different monitoring stations. Once you record many earthquakes, with many waves passing through each box from lots of different directions, you can calculate a model of the structure of the earth in that spot.
Photo by Nancy Marie Brown
You’ve recently used earthquakes to map the structure underneath all of Iceland. What have you learned?
We found that the old model we’ve been using all these years for all of Iceland turns out to be only good for the northwest part of the country. There’s a big change in the thickness of the earth’s crust in different parts of the island. That surprised us. The thickness of the crust in the south, near Eyjafjallajökull, is 22 kilometers. In Reykjanes, in the southwest, it’s 17 kilometers. At Grimsvotn, in the southeast, it’s about 40 kilometers.
The new model we’ve developed gives you the location and depth of an earthquake much more accurately. There’s a 1.4-second difference in travel time between the old model and the new one, which is a big difference, considering that we’re working in milliseconds. There’s no way you would have been able to get the right location using the old model.
Our goal is to identify the location where a quake starts. In a volcanic eruption, our model shows you where the molten lava is propagating from. In an earthquake, it shows you where the stress is, so you can map the fault.
Now that you have a better picture of what the earth looks like underneath Iceland, what’s the next step in improving your ability to predict earthquakes and volcanic eruptions?
We’re building portable seismic equipment banks, powered by windmills and solar panels. We’ll have 23 if we get the next round of funding. It took five years to get the right equipment—we wanted them to be able to transmit remotely to our computers here at the Met Office in Reykjavík.
We have six of these portable banks now at Eyjafjallajökull. On April 6, for example, there was a 3.7 magnitude earthquake near there. What the system does is to plot a color-coded map of the arrival times of the seismic waves. It takes about 55 seconds for a wave to travel from the first station to the farthest one. The Shake Map—which shows you where the quake was felt—appears in three minutes. It’s immediately up on the web—the Civil Defense has access to it and can see right away how widely the earthquake was felt. The epicenter of that particular earthquake was 5.4 kilometers south of Basar. The magnitude of the quake—3.7—took the system about two more minutes to calculate. Nobody has to be here watching the instruments; it’s all automatic. This is great for rescue teams, especially since all the big earthquakes and eruptions we’ve had have had foreshocks.
Natural Fusion Welcomed Home
The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette published a nice article today about Natural Fusion’s dedication as a conference center for Bayer MaterialScience in Robinson Township, Pa. Natural Fusion is the house that Penn State students built for the Solar Decathlon last fall; we blogged yesterday about the house getting a permanent home at Bayer’s corporate campus just outside Pittsburgh.
The building serves as an example of energy-efficient design, and in keeping with that theme, instead of the traditional ribbon cutting, the company celebrated its new conference center by planting a tree.
Amy Guyer, associate editor
Solar House Finds Its Home in Pittsburgh
Photo: Geoff Rushton ’01
The solar house that Penn State students built last fall now has a permanent home. It’s now in place at Bayer MaterialScience in Robinson Township, Pa., just outside Pittsburgh; the house was commissioned in its new location today.
Students from three colleges—Engineering, Earth and Mineral Sciences, and Arts and Architecture—built the house for the 2009 Solar Decathlon, an event in which 20 schools from across the country and around the world compete to build the best solar house. The houses in the competition were on display on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. last October. The decathlon is sponsored by the U.S. Department of Energy.
Natural Fusion, Penn State’s entry, is a small building—just 800 sq. ft.—and is a solar-powered, zero-emission structure. We took some photos of the construction progress back in August, but if you want to check out the end result, you’ll have to head to the Bayer MaterialScience campus, where the building now serves as a conference center and a showcase for Bayer’s new EcoCommercial Building initiative. (Bayer helped to fund Natural Fusion and helped review its initial designs.) You can also check out a virtual tour at the team’s website.
Penn State students also entered the 2007 Solar Decathlon. That entry, MorningStar, is on display next to the Centre County Visitors Center, across from Beaver Stadium. It’s open for tours most Sundays between 1 and 4 p.m.
Amy Guyer, associate editor
Dean Talks Climate Change
One of the great parts of the Campaign Kick-Off Celebration over the weekend was the educational sessions, which are designed to give attendees a sense of what kind of research and programs are happening on campus. I went to several over the weekend and learned a lot, but the one that made the biggest impression on me was the first one: Understanding Climate Change.
It wasn’t the science that grabbed me. It was that even though climate change has become a contentious issue, with Penn State professor Michael Mann at the heart of the recent Climategate episode, it wasn’t glossed over. William Easterling, dean of the College of Earth and Mineral Sciences and a lead author of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change that won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2007, addressed a room full of guests that included Penn State President Graham Spanier and at least a handful of self-identified climate change skeptics.
“I am not a political person,” Easterling said. “I try not to stray into what the press is saying about climate change at any given time. I imagine the vast majority of research scientists are of the same ilk.”
That didn’t stop Easterling from giving a 45-minute lecture on climate change, explaining both the non-contested facts (there are some, he said, including that the greenhouse effect is real and that several lines of evidence show that the planet’s average temperature has been rising) and the areas where controversy has arisen (whether it’s man’s fault, and whether the temperature change is out of the ordinary).
Among the tidbits I picked up: Thanks to a National Science Foundation grant, Easterling has a lilac bush that he is monitoring, looking to determine whether flowers are blooming earlier; much of today’s science depends on high-end computer simulations that are used to test hypotheses, a process that has become an accepted part of the scientific method only in the past 15 years or so; and the BBC’s website has, in Easterling’s opinion, excellent explainers on climate and weather.
More important, I think, Easterling took questions from the audience, and he engaged directly with those climate change skeptics.
I’m not going to pretend I understand enough science to be able to follow all of the details of the arguments. (And I’m not alone; Andrew Revkin, who is widely respected for his coverage of the environment for the New York Times, said he has to wait for the peer-reviewed journals to weigh in—on this On The Media podcast.) But I do respect that the skeptics asked questions, and that Easterling answered.
Regrettably, time ran out as the discussion was really getting started. Easterling wrapped up by saying, “It wasn’t my intent to try to change your mind.” And he offered to continue the conversation via e-mail, too.
Lori Shontz, senior editor
Snowpocalypse? This Meteorologist Might Agree
AccuWeather meteorologist and Penn Stater Jim Kosek ’86 got a little excited about the “snowpocalypse” that buried Baltimore this past weekend. Making its way around Facebook (that’s where I found it—linked from the Daily Press) and with over 630,000 views on YouTube, looks like Kosek’s snow…excitement?…may have hit the spot.
Enjoy below.
Oh boy.
If you’re all jazzed up from watching that video, you can always head on over to Facebook and join his fan club. Yes, he has a fan club, with 861 members so far. The description of the group is simple: “This man brings joy to my life.”
Amy Guyer, associate editor
Some Resolution for “Climategate”
Michael Mann, the prominent climate researcher and director of Penn State’s Earth System Science Center, has been largely cleared by the University of wrongdoing in the so-called “Climategate” scandal.
In a report released this morning, a panel of University administrators found no evidence of professional misconduct in three of the four allegations—accusations that he hid or falsified climate data; deleted emails or information tied to British climate scientist Phil Jones; or misused privileged information—brought against Mann. On the fourth allegation—essentially, the question of whether Mann fudged his research findings—the panel decided it lacked the expertise to make a definitive call. The investigation will be passed on to a new panel, made up of five high-level faculty in engineering and the sciences, who will review the evidence and announce their findings in the next four months.
You can read extended takes on the story from the The New York Times here, and from The Chronicle of Higher Education here.
And you can read Mann’s statement on the findings here.
Ryan Jones, senior editor
Michael Mann Profiled in Philadelphia Inquirer
We’ve gotten a number of letters to the editor lately from people who have, let’s just say, very strong feelings on the subject of global climate change—and especially on the “climategate” brouhaha involving Penn State meteorology professor Michael Mann. Some of the discourse has been a bit less than civil: One reader called Mann “this low life on our faculty”; another said, “I am embarrassed that Mr. Mann is a part of Penn State. I would be disappointed if the University wasn’t doing all they can to send him to a different climate.”
So I was very interested to see a profile of Mann in today’s Philadelphia Inquirer. Writer Faye Flam came up to University Park this past week to interview Mann and has produced a fairly level-headed profile, one that examines the controversy in a calmer, more nuanced way. It’s worth reading.
Tina Hay, editor
More on ‘Climategate’
I’m a fan of FactCheck.org, a project of the Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania. They do a good job of trying to sort out truth from fiction in many public policy debates, and I’ve found that on any given issue—be it the health-care debate or stimulus spending or immigration—they will painstakingly correct misstatements made by both sides.
So I was interested to see them weigh in yesterday on “Climategate,” the brouhaha involving several climate scientists (including Penn State faculty member Michael Mann). In a nutshell, FactCheck.org says:
Climate skeptics are claiming that they show scientific misconduct that amounts to the complete fabrication of man-made global warming. We find that to be unfounded.
If you’re interested in the issue, I really recommend taking the time to read their analysis carefully. It’s very thorough and thoughtful.
Tina Hay, editor
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