COVID-19, Climate, and a Dedicated Scientific Community

A Note from Our Director, Sean Solomon: Research and Education during a Month of Extraordinary Change

With remarkable swiftness, the coronavirus pandemic has disrupted our world, our lives, and the work that we do. In New York state, the first local case of COVID-19 was confirmed only on March 1, yet by the end of the month more than 75,000 residents had been diagnosed with the disease. At Columbia University, all classes are now being taught online, most undergraduates have moved home from their dormitories, and all domestic and international travel on university business has been suspended. Over a period of days, the Lamont community responded to a university directive, issued to slow coronavirus transmission, to ramp down on-campus research activities to levels at which only a few essential personnel can maintain key laboratory and infrastructural functions. By the end of March the great majority of Lamont personnel had been working remotely from homes and other locations for more than two weeks.

Notwithstanding the imperative to protect the health and safety of all Lamont personnel, and to offer whatever emotional and physical support we can provide to the healthcare professionals who are selflessly testing and treating those exposed to and infected from the coronavirus, Lamont’s mission to improve our understanding of the workings of our planet and to educate the next generation of Earth science leaders continues. Some of that work now involves the coronavirus outbreak and its consequences for the Earth system, but much of our attention is still devoted to questions we were pursuing at the beginning of the month. We now wrestle, however, with how best to communicate with students and collaborators, to work remotely when such work is feasible, and to accommodate delays in fieldwork and access to laboratories until current restrictions on social interactions can be lifted.

This newsletter offers a view of some of the progress the Lamont community achieved this past month, even amidst the extraordinary changes occurring around the globe.

Lamont is fortunate to be part of a larger structural unit at Columbia, the Earth Institute, with its broad array of experts in all aspects of living on and interacting with a complex world. On March 26, three Earth Institute faculty members with expertise in public health issues – Jeffrey Shaman, Director of the Climate and Public Health Program at the Mailman School of Public Health; and Irwin Redlener and Jeff Schlegelmilch, respectively the Director and Deputy Director of the National Center for Disaster Preparedness – gave video presentations on their work on the coronavirus pandemic. You should find their presentations timely and informative.

May everyone at Lamont, and all of our friends and newsletter subscribers, follow now-standard health and safety practices and find mechanisms to remain productive even during this exceptional time.

This Earth Month, we are celebrating our Earth Institute and Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory scientists and experts and the 50th anniversary of Earth Day on April 22, 2020. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, and YouTube for video features throughout the month, and stay tuned for the launch of our Earth Day website!

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EDUCATION

Earth Institute Goes Live in Video Series for K-12 Students and Educators

By Cassie Xu

Students Visiting the Lamont Core Repository

In response to the sudden and unprecedented need to home school during the coronavirus pandemic, Lamont’s education and outreach team will launch Earth Institute Live (EI Live), an online video series, which will provide educational content to K-12 students and educators beginning on April 6. The series will feature Lamont researchers and other scientific experts from across the institute in 60-minute live sessions during which they will share aspects of their work through lectures, interactive activities, and demonstrations.

Lamont in the Media