Columbia Scientists participate in Environmental Workshop

January 05, 2018

A delegation from Columbia’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory (LDEO), led by Gisela Winckler, a researcher at LDEO and adjunct professor at the Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences traveled to Chile in early January to participate in a workshop entitled "The Role of Dust in Climate Change: A biogeochemistry perspective". 

The event brought together scientists, both from the observations (modern and paleo) and the climate modeling community, to discuss recent work addressing critical uncertainties and progress in determining the emission, transport, and deposition of dust, as well as the sensitivity of continental and ocean biogeochemistry and climate to atmospheric dust input. Key participants from the dust modeling, dust reconstruction, and biogeochemistry communities were invited to attend.

The three-day workshop took place at Universidad Católica’s Coastal Marine Research Station, located in the coastal town of Las Cruces. It was organized by PAGE’s* Dust Impact on Climate and Environment working group (DICE).

Winckler co-chaired the workshop together with Universidad Católica’s Fabrice Lambert and Cornell University’s Natalie Mahowald.

Other Columbia scientists attending the event included Jordan Abell and Elizabeth Shoenfelt, both graduate students in DEES, and Jennifer Middleton, a postdoctoral research scientist at LDEO (pictured here with Winckler).

*PAGE (Past Global Changes) supports research which aims to understand the Earth’s past environment in order to obtain better predictions of future climate and environment, and inform strategies for sustainability. We encourage international and interdisciplinary collaborations and seek to promote the involvement of scientists from developing countries in the global paleo-community discourse.