Events
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JSG | BEG | UTIG | EPS |
De Ford Lecture Series: Kate Maher
Start:November 1, 2018 at 4:00 pm
End:
November 1, 2018 at 5:00 pm
Location:
JGB 2.324
UTIG Seminar Series: Rosaly Lopes, Jet Propulsion Laboratory
Start:November 2, 2018 at 10:30 am
End:
November 2, 2018 at 11:30 am
Location:
PRC ROC Room 1.603
Contact:
Anisa Abdulkader, aabdulkader@ig.utexas.edu, 512-471-0417
Title: Global Geology of Titan from Cassini
Abstract: Titan has shown itself to be one of the solar system’s most intriguing objects for study, with a variety of unusual candidate materials on its surface, such as seas of liquid hydrocarbons. Titan is very geologically complex, and features found from Cassini data include large craters, cryovolcanoes, mountains, flowing channels, vast fields of dunes, and rivers, lakes and seas of methane. Titan is very Earth-like in its geology, despite the very different surface conditions and composition, and has become known as “the Earth of the outer solar system”. This talk will discuss the global distribution and origin of different surface units.
Host: Cyril Grima
Alumni Reception during GSA in Indianapolis
Start:November 5, 2018 at 6:00 pm
End:
November 5, 2018 at 8:00 pm
Location:
Ram Restaurant and Brewery, 140 South Illinois Street in Indianapolis
Contact:
Kristen Tucek, ktucek@jsg.utexas.edu, 512.471.2223
UTIG Special Seminar: Andrew Green, Kwazulu-Natal University
Start:November 6, 2018 at 2:00 pm
End:
November 6, 2018 at 3:00 pm
Location:
PRC ROC Room 2.201
Contact:
Anisa Abdulkader, aabdulkader@ig.utexas.edu, 512-471-0417
Title: Geomorphological indicators of stepped Holocene sea-level rise from the SE African continental shelf
Abstract: The narrow, bedrock-framed and current-swept shelf of SE Africa is host to a variety of seafloor features that give insight into the patterns of sea-level change since the last glacial maxima. The subtropical climate and antecedent geomorphology of the shelf have resulted in the widespread lithification and preservation of a multitude of coastal landforms, now located along the seafloor at depths of 60 m and 100 m. These coastal landforms comprise a number of interesting shoreline features including barrier islands and inlets, relict estuaries, segmented coastal lagoons, and large-scale aeolian dune complexes. The depth of these features matches with those described for periods of stable sea level preceding both meltwater pulse 1A and 1B and their location overlies the last glacial maximum drainage preserved in the shelf stratigraphy. This talk described their similarity to contemporary shorelines, puts their preservation into the context of transgressive processes and links their occurrence to major changes in global sea level since the LGM. Examples are also shown of features identified from similar depths on the inner shelf of SW Africa and parallels are drawn between the two.
Speaker bio: Andy Green
Host: John Goff
UTIG Brown Bag Seminar: Benjamin Stephens
Start:November 7, 2018 at 12:00 pm
End:
November 7, 2018 at 1:00 pm
Location:
PRC ROC Room 1.603
Contact:
Brandon Shuck, brandon.shuck@utexas.edu
Informal weekly presentations by UTIG students and researchers. Bring your lunch!
This week: Effect of Large-Scale Condensation on Uncertainty in Modeled Projections of Rainfall
Speaker page: Ben Stephens
UTIG Seminar Series: Pedro Di Nezio, UTIG
Start:November 9, 2018 at 10:30 am
End:
November 9, 2018 at 11:30 am
Location:
PRC ROC Room 1.603
Contact:
Anisa Abdulkader, aabdulkader@ig.utexas.edu, 512-471-0417
Click to watch the seminar online
Host: Dr. Yuko Okumura
Title: The importance of the Indian Ocean for tropical climate change
Abstract: The Indian Ocean (IO) has long been considered a minor player in past and future climate changes in the tropics. I will present evidence challenging this view and show that this ocean can experience dramatic climatic reorganizations amplified by coupled ocean-atmosphere dynamics. This conclusion is supported by analysis of model simulations and paleoclimate proxies of the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM) – the most recent glacial interval ca. 21,000 years ago. The triggering mechanism, exposure of the Sunda and Sahul shelves due to lower glacial sea level, has no future analogue; but the amplifying mechanism does, and could be a fundamental feature of the IO. In addition to these permanent changes, the IO can experience much stronger year-to-year climate variations due to emergence of a mode of variability resembling the El Niño phenomenon in the Pacific. This mode has not been observed yet, but our new paleoclimate data confirms it was active during the LGM. This increases our confidence on model predictions of its future emergence, with important implications for predicting climate extremes in countries of the Indian Ocean rim. These results revise the current Pacific-centric paradigm and demonstrate that past climatic intervals are key to study out of sample behavior in the climate system.
UTIG Brown Bag Seminar: Sophie Goliber
Start:November 14, 2018 at 12:00 pm
End:
November 14, 2018 at 1:00 pm
Location:
PRC ROC Room 1.603
Contact:
Brandon Shuck, brandon.shuck@utexas.edu
View Event
Informal weekly presentations by UTIG students and researchers. Bring your lunch!
This week: Adventures in Alaska with the International Summer School in Glaciology
Speaker: Sophie Goliber
De Ford Lecture Series: Richard Fiorella
Start:November 15, 2018 at 4:00 pm
End:
November 15, 2018 at 5:00 pm
Location:
JGB 2.324
UTIG Seminar Series: Krista Soderlund, UTIG
Start:November 16, 2018 at 10:30 am
End:
November 16, 2018 at 11:30 am
Location:
PRC ROC Room 1.603
Contact:
Anisa Abdulkader, aabdulkader@ig.utexas.edu, 512-471-0417
Speaker bio – Krista Soderlund.
Host: Don Blankenship
Title: Ocean Dynamics of Outer Solar System Satellites
Abstract: Exploration of the outer solar system has shown that subsurface oceans may be relatively common in the interiors of icy satellites. The presence of liquid water makes these ocean worlds compelling astrobiological targets. However, the dynamics of these oceans also play a role in promoting habitable environments. Here, we focus on the convective ocean dynamics of Europa and Ganymede in preparation for the upcoming Europa Clipper and JUICE missions and of Enceladus and Titan given the abundance of data from the Cassini mission. We use theoretical arguments and numerical models to make predictions about ocean currents and heat transfer patterns. Our results show that oceans in the outer solar system are prone to dynamics that are not strongly constrained by the Coriolis force due to their relatively slow rotation rates. In addition, convective heat transfer is found to vary with latitude, which may have consequences for the thermophysical structure of the ice shell and be linked to surface deformation.
De Ford Lecture Series: Masaki Hayashi
Start:November 27, 2018 at 4:00 pm
End:
November 27, 2018 at 5:00 pm
Location:
JGB 2.324
UTIG Brown Bag Seminar: Thomas Morrow
Start:November 28, 2018 at 12:00 pm
End:
November 28, 2018 at 1:00 pm
Location:
PRC ROC Room 1.603
Contact:
Brandon Shuck, brandon.shuck@utexas.edu
View Event
Informal weekly presentations by UTIG students and researchers. Bring your lunch!
Can’t make it? Watch the seminar online
This week: The Song of the Plume: Quantifying Volumetric Output Signals and Power Spectra at Twelve Hotspots.
Speaker: Thomas Morrow, University of Idaho
De Ford Lecture Series: Matthew Collins
Start:November 29, 2018 at 4:00 pm
End:
November 29, 2018 at 5:00 pm
Location:
JGB 2.324
UTIG Seminar Series: UTIG Graduate Students
Start:November 30, 2018 at 10:30 am
End:
November 30, 2018 at 11:30 am
Location:
PRC ROC Room 1.603
Contact:
Anisa Abdulkader, aabdulkader@ig.utexas.edu, 512-471-0417
View Event
In this seminar three UTIG students present a short overview of their research and recent findings.
Speakers (click name for bio)
Allison Lawman – NSF Graduate Research Fellowship
Title: Reconstructing paleo-ENSO variability using geochemical proxies from corals
Host: Jud Partin
Abstract: The El Nino-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) is the leading mode of interannual climate variability, causing global impacts on temperature and rainfall patterns. Future projections of ENSO variability suggest a wide range of responses to anthropogenic forcing, including a reliable subset of models that predict an increase in extreme events. Reducing uncertainty in the model projections of ENSO is critical for resource planning in the future. This motivates the use of paleo-ENSO reconstructions as out-of-sample tests of climate model simulations that are run under past climate conditions. Coral records of surface ocean conditions extend our knowledge of interannual tropical climate variability to places and times when there is limited or no instrumental data, thus providing a means to test models run under past conditions. However, coral reconstructions of past ENSO activity have uncertainties due to internal variability within the climate system as well as errors inherent to the proxy archive. Focusing on ENSO variability over the last two thousand years (the Common Era, CE), provides context for understanding natural ENSO variability as external forcings to the climate system are broadly similar to the present. Here we use geochemical proxies from corals to reconstruct ENSO-related sea surface temperature (SST) variability during the 20th century and ~900 years ago during the Medieval Climate Anomaly (950-1250 CE). Fossil coral records indicate one hundred years of relatively lower ENSO variability during part of the Medieval Climate Anomaly in the 10-13th centuries. These results demonstrate that periods of reduced ENSO activity can last a century, far longer than modern observations in the instrumental record of ENSO, but consistent with results from unforced climate model simulations. Sources of uncertainty in the coral archive of climate include analytical/calibration error, variable growth rates, and the process of transforming the data from the depth to the time domain. We use output from the Community Earth System Model version 1.2 to forward model pseudocoral monthly anomaly time series at time intervals with different background conditions over the past 24,000 years. We combine our results from the last two millennia, which quantify internal climate variability, and the pseudocoral, which quantifies uncertainties in coral-based ENSO reconstructions, in order to more accurately compare paleoclimate estimates from corals with model simulations of past ENSO behavior. Many of the models used to simulate the past are also used to predict the future, so paleoclimate data provides important validation for climate models and can reduce uncertainties about how ENSO may change in the future.
Tianyi Sun – Ewing-Worzel Graduate Fellowship
Title: Role of Stochastic Atmospheric Forcing in Tropical Pacific Decadal Variability and ENSO Modulation
Host: Yuko Okumura
Abstract: Global mean temperatures increased less rapidly between the late 1990s and the early 2010s in spite of continuously rising atmospheric CO2 concentration. This so-called “global warming hiatus” highlights the uncertainty in decadal climate projections due to internal variability of the climate system, in particular, tropical Pacific decadal variability. It has been long acknowledged that decadal climate variability can be generated in the extratropics through integration of stochastic atmospheric forcing by the ocean mixed layer. However, it remains unclear how the extratropical signal propagates into the tropical Pacific and forms a basin-wide anomaly pattern of decadal variability and whether the resultant changes in the tropical Pacific mean state affect the El Niño-Southern Oscillation, the dominant mode of interannual climate variability. To address these questions, a set of climate model experiments was conducted by imposing surface heat flux anomalies over the North and South Pacific that mimic the effect of stochastic atmospheric forcing on decadal time scales. The results reveal that the effect of North and South Pacific atmospheric forcing propagates into the tropical Pacific mainly through thermodynamic ocean-atmosphere interactions. The associated changes in the tropical Pacific mean state do not only extend climate anomalies into the other hemisphere through atmospheric teleconnections, but also significantly affect the properties of ENSO.
Sophie Goliber – NASA Earth and Space Science Fellowship
Title: Advancements with SpATIaL: Semi-Automatic glacier Terminus Inventory from Landsat
Host: Ginny Catania
Abstract: Glacier terminus position change represents a complex response to the interaction between ice sheet, ocean, atmosphere, and sedimentary environments. Dynamic change to the marine margins of outlet glaciers has been responsible for a large portion of the mass loss from the Greenland ice sheet (GrIS) over the past two decades as retreat influences upstream thinning and acceleration, which in turn, causes additional ice loss. Observations of terminus position change compared to bed geometry, ice melange presence, and the timing of meltwater runoff suggest that a detailed reconstruction of terminus positions can be useful to quantify the controls on outlet glacier dynamics in GrIS. However, the time required to hand-pick glacier termini puts a limit on how rapidly this analysis can be completed. Here we present work towards a semi-automated algorithm for terminus identification using Landsat 8 multispectral imagery. Front delineation is achieved through digital image processing techniques, such as edge and morphological operators in order to locate the highest intensity changes within a fjord. Currently, our picker is effect in clear images, but the presence of heavy ice mélange, low solar illumination, or shadows can create false or zero picks. We anticipate exploring other deep learning techniques for distinguishing the terminus position in the near future.
Hot Science - Cool Talk "A Taste for the Beautiful"
Start:November 30, 2018 at 7:00 pm
End:
November 30, 2018 at 8:15 pm
Location:
Student Activity Center (SAC)
Contact:
Didey Montoya, didey@austin.utexas.edu, 512-471-4211
View Event
Why do animals perceive certain traits as beautiful and others not? While Darwin explained why the animal world abounds in stunning beauty, he struggled to understand how. Dr. Michael Ryan, one of the world’s leading authorities on animal behavior, tells the remarkable story of how he and other scientists have taken up where Darwin left off and transformed our understanding of sexual selection. Join Dr. Ryan as he explores how beauty is defined through the brain of the beholder.
UTIG Seminar Series: Cornelia Rasmussen, UTIGApril, 26 2024Time: 10:30 AM - 11:30 AMLocation: PRC 196/ROC 1.603 Speaker: Cornelia Rasmussen, Research Associate, University of Texas Institute for Geophysics Host: Krista Soderlund Title: The Emerging Field Of Position-Specific Isotope Analysis: Applications in chemical forensics, exobiology, geo- and environmental sciences Abstract: Complex organics can be found all over our solar system and within each living thing on our planet, be it as part of its physiology or as a contaminant. However, different processes can lead to the formation of chemical identical molecules. This makes answering a number of scientific questions challenging. One example is distinguishing between biotic and abiotic molecules, hence hindering life detection on early Earth but especially on other planetary bodies, such as on Mars, Titan, Enceladus and on meteorites where organics have been detected. Moreover, tracing molecules as they move through the environment can be demanding, yet is essential in studying the flow of organic molecules as well as correlating pollutants with their source. Novel tools to address these challenges are currently being developed. Especially, the emerging field of position-specific isotope analysis is beginning to grant access to the unique intramolecular carbon (13C/12C) isotope fingerprint preserved in complex molecules. This fingerprint can be applied in various scientific disciplines, ranging from forensics to exobiology, geo- and environmental sciences, including geo health. Nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy (NMR) has the potential to become a key player in this research area, as it allows the analysis of organics within complex mixtures, all without the need to fragment the molecule into single carbon units or the combustion of the molecule of interest. We have been developing several NMR tools that allow us to investigate the intramolecular carbon isotope distribution within various molecule classes and to test the central hypothesis that the position-specific carbon isotope distribution within complex organics depends on a molecule’s source and formation history. |
Planetary Habitability Seminar SeriesApril, 29 2024Time: 1:00 PM - 2:00 PMLocation: PMA 15.216B UT Center for Planetary Systems Habitability Seminar Series. See website for speaker schedule and more details: View Events Join remotely: https://utexas.zoom.us/j/94052130734 In person: Classroom 15.216B, Physics, Math and Astronomy Bldg. UT Austin, Department of Astronomy 2515 Speedway, Stop C1400 Austin, Texas 78712-1205 |
UTIG Discussion Hour: Kristian Chan - PhD Talk (UTIG)April, 30 2024Time: 2:00 PM - 3:00 PMLocation: ROC 2.201 |