School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences

Coastal Glacier Retreat Linked to Climate Change

bwaye3 — Tue, 19 Jul 2022 20:05:40 +0000

Coastal Glacier Retreat Linked to Climate Change bwaye3 Tue, 07/19/2022 - 16:05

More of the world’s coastal glaciers are melting faster than ever, but exactly what’s triggering the large-scale retreat has been difficult to discern because of natural fluctuations in the glaciers’ surroundings.

Now, researchers at the University of Texas Institute for Geophysics (UTIG) and the Georgia Institute for Technology have developed a methodology to determine why coastal glaciers are retreating, and in turn, how much can be attributed to human-caused climate change. Attributing the human role for coastal glaciers – which melt directly into the sea – could pave the way to better predictions about sea level rise.

Published July 13 in the journal The Cryosphere, the methodology is unique because it treats rapid glacier retreat as an individual probabilistic event, like a wildfire or tropical storm. For a large retreat to happen, the glacier must retreat past its “stability threshold,” which is usually a steep rise in the underlying bedrock that helps slow its flow. The probability of that happening varies depending on local climate and ocean conditions that change with natural fluctuations and human-caused warming. Even small variations can cause large changes in a glacier’s behavior, making them hard to predict and leading to cases where glaciers were found retreating right next to ones that weren’t.

So far, scientists have tested the approach only in computer models using simplified glaciers. They found that even modest global warming caused most glaciers to melt, or retreat.

The next step, the researchers said, is for scientists to simulate the coastal glaciers of a real ice sheet, like Greenland’s, which holds enough ice to raise sea level by about 22 feet (7 meters). That will reveal whether they are retreating due to climate change and help predict when major ice loss might next occur.

“The methodology we’re proposing is a road map towards making confident statements about what the human role is [in glacial retreats],” said glaciologist John Christian, who is a postdoctoral researcher at both The University of Texas at Austin and Georgia Tech. “Those statements can then be communicated to the public and policymakers and help in their decision making.”

Overcoming Uncertainty

Co-author and UTIG glaciologist Ginny Catania points out that the last Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report found there was still too much uncertainty about coastal glaciers to say whether their retreat is due to human-caused climate change or natural climate fluctuations.

The new study shows how to overcome the uncertainty by providing a methodology that accounts for differences between glaciers and natural climate fluctuations, while testing the effect of background trends such as global warming. According to Catania, the study means they can now attribute mass coastal glacier retreat to climate change and not just natural variability.

“And that’s the first time anyone’s done that,” she said.

To test the methodology, the team ran thousands of simulations of the past 150 years with and without global warming. The simulations showed that even modest warming dramatically increased the probability of ice sheet-wide glacier retreat.

When the scientists ran models without human-caused climate change, they found it virtually impossible for more than a few of the glaciers to begin retreating within years of each other.

By contrast, since 2000, nearly all (200) of Greenland’s 225 coastal glaciers have been in varying states of retreat.

“This study gives us a toolbox to determine the role of humans in the loss of ice from Greenland and Antarctica, to say with confidence that it’s not just coincidence,” said Georgia Tech College of Sciences glaciologist and co-author Alex Robel.

The research on coastal glaciers builds on previous work to understand the human role on the retreat of mountain glaciers — which is now well-established. The latest study was funded by UTIG and the National Science Foundation. UTIG is a research arm of UT Austin’s Jackson School of Geosciences.

Citation: John Erich Christian, Alexander A. Robel, Ginny Catania. A probabilistic framework for quantifying the role of anthropogenic climate change in marine-terminating glacier retreats. The Cryosphere, 2022; 16 (7): 2725 DOI: 10.5194/tc-16-2725-2022

Summary sentence

Researchers have developed a methodology to determine why coastal glaciers are retreating, and in turn, how much can be attributed to human-caused climate change.

Summary

Researchers have developed a methodology to determine why coastal glaciers are retreating, and in turn, how much can be attributed to human-caused climate change.

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Tue, 07/19/2022 - 12:00

georgia.parmelee@gatech.edu

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Tue, 07/19/2022 - 13:16

Ocean ‘Greening’ at Poles Could Spell Changes for Fisheries

admin — Thu, 19 Jun 2025 18:16:41 +0000

Ocean ‘Greening’ at Poles Could Spell Changes for Fisheries admin Thu, 06/19/2025 - 14:16

Ocean waters are getting greener at the poles and bluer toward the equator, according to an analysis of satellite data published in Science on June 19. The change reflects shifting concentrations of a green pigment called chlorophyll made by phytoplankton, photosynthetic marine organisms at the base of the ocean food chain. If the trend continues, marine food webs could be affected, with potential repercussions for global fisheries.

“In the ocean, what we see based on satellite measurements is that the tropics and the subtropics are generally losing chlorophyll, whereas the polar regions — the high-latitude regions — are greening,” says first author Haipeng Zhao, a postdoctoral researcher at Georgia Tech working with Susan Lozier, dean of the College of Sciences and Betsy Middleton and John Sutherland Chair at Georgia Tech and Nicolas Cassar, the Lee Hill Snowdon Bass Chair at Duke University’s Nicholas School of the Environment.

Since the 1990s, many studies have documented enhanced greening on land, where global average leaf cover is increasing due to rising temperatures and other factors. But documenting photosynthesis across the ocean has been more difficult, according to the team. Although satellite images can provide data on chlorophyll production at the ocean’s surface, the picture is incomplete.

The study analyzed satellite data collected from 2003 to 2022 by a NASA instrument that combs the entire Earth every two days, measuring light wavelength. The researchers were looking for changes in chlorophyll concentration, a proxy for phytoplankton biomass. For consistency, they focused on the open ocean and excluded data from coastal waters.

“There are more suspended sediments in coastal waters, so optical properties are different than in the open ocean,” Zhao explains.

The satellite data revealed broad trends in color, indicating that chlorophyll is decreasing in subtropical and tropical regions and increasing toward the poles. Building on that finding, the team examined how chlorophyll concentration is changing at specific latitudes. To work around background noise and gaps in data, they had to get creative.

“We borrowed concepts from economics called the Lorenz curve and the Gini index, which together show how wealth is distributed in a society. So, we thought, let’s apply these to see whether the proportion of the ocean that holds the most chlorophyll has changed over time,” Cassar says.

They found similar but opposing trends in chlorophyll concentration over the two-decade period. Green areas became greener, particularly in the northern hemisphere, while blue regions got even bluer.

“It’s like rich people getting richer and the poor getting poorer,” Zhao says.

Next, the team examined how the patterns they observed were affected by several variables, including sea surface temperature, wind speed, light availability and mixed layer depth — a measure that reflects mixing in the ocean’s top layer by wind, waves and surface currents. Warming seas correlated with changes in chlorophyll concentration, but the other variables showed no significant associations.

The authors cautioned that their findings cannot be attributed to climate change.

“The study period was too short to rule out the influence of recurring climate phenomena such as El Niño,” Lozier says. “Having measurements for the next several decades will be important for determining influences beyond climate oscillations.”

If poleward shifts in phytoplankton continue, however, they could affect the global carbon cycle. During photosynthesis, phytoplankton act like sponges, soaking up carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. When these organisms die and sink to the ocean bottom, carbon goes down with them. The location and depth of that stored carbon can influence climate warming.

“If carbon sinks deeper or in places where water doesn’t resurface for a long time, it stays stored much longer. In contrast, shallow carbon can return to the atmosphere more quickly, reducing the effect of phytoplankton on carbon storage,” Cassar says.

Additionally, a persistent decline in phytoplankton in equatorial regions could alter fisheries that many low- and middle-income nations, such as those in the Pacific Islands, rely on for food and economic development — especially if that decline carries over to coastal regions, according to the authors.

“Phytoplankton are at the base of the marine food chain. If they are reduced, then the upper levels of the food chain could also be impacted, which could mean a potential redistribution of fisheries,” Cassar says.

Funding: National Science Foundation and NASA.

Citation: “Greener green and bluer blue: Ocean poleward greening over the past two decades,” Zhao H., Manizza M., Lozier S.M. and Cassar N. Science, June 19, 2025, DOI: 10.1126/science.adr9715

This story by Julie Leibach is shared with the Duke University Nicholas School of the Environment newsroom.

Summary sentence

Ocean waters are getting greener at the poles and bluer toward the equator, according to an analysis of satellite data published in Science on June 19.

Summary

Ocean waters are getting greener at the poles and bluer toward the equator, according to an analysis of satellite data published in Science. The change reflects shifting concentrations of chlorophyll made by phytoplankton. If the trend continues, marine food webs could be affected, with potential impacts on fisheries near the equator and carbon sequestration near the poles.

Dateline

Thu, 06/19/2025 - 12:00

jess@cos.gatech.edu

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Nicholas School of the Environment
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Thu, 06/19/2025 - 14:16

Sciences Scholars Named University Center of Exemplary Mentoring Program Fellows

dgivens8 — Wed, 16 Apr 2025 17:04:41 +0000

Sciences Scholars Named University Center of Exemplary Mentoring Program Fellows dgivens8 Wed, 04/16/2025 - 13:04

Five Ph.D. scholars from the College of Sciences are the newest members of the Georgia Tech University Center of Exemplary Mentoring (UCEM) Ph.D. Fellowship program, which now includes the College’s Center for Promoting Inclusion and Equity in the Sciences (C-PIES).

“This is the first year the College of Sciences has been involved with UCEM, and it will be very impactful for the professional development for these students,” says Lewis Wheaton, C-PIES director and professor in the School of Biological Sciences. “The process for selection was highly competitive and these students really demonstrate strong scientific ability, have compelling research, and are having a powerful impact in the college community and beyond.”

The new UCEM/C-PIES Fellows:

The Georgia Tech UCEM Ph.D. Fellowship program has the goal of increasing the number of outstanding engineering, science, and computing Ph.D. students from underserved populations. The program seeks to support students from backgrounds that include African American/Black, Hispanic, Native American, and Pacific Islander. The Georgia Tech UCEM Ph.D. Fellowship provides three years of support for students who have recently completed the Ph.D. Qualifying/Preliminary exam.

C-PIES at the College of Sciences works in collaboration with the College of Engineering and the College of Computing — through the Georgia Tech Underrepresented Minority (URM) Graduate Leadership Initiative — to support the Expand Access focus area of the Institute’s strategic plan for graduate student enrollment and retention.

Meet the College of Sciences UCEM Fellows

Sarah E. Gonzalez

“I was excited and relieved to find out I was a UCEM Fellow. As everyone knows, being a grad student isn’t the most financially stable position, so anything extra is a big help,” Gonzales says.

Gonzalez researches in the lab of Associate Professor Elisabetta Matsumoto, studying knitted fabrics and their mechanical behavior. “She is my biggest supporter at Georgia Tech. We have a very tight-knit and supportive research group.”

Danielle Grau

“I was shocked and elated when I received the email with the news, and excited about the opportunity to be a part of such a prestigious fellowship,” Grau says. “I am excited to see what opportunities and relationships it will forge in the future.”

Assistant Professor Alexander Robel is Grau’s thesis adviser. “I am extremely grateful and appreciative for all the support, guidance, and encouragement he has given me throughout my time at Georgia Tech. He's a phenomenal mentor and advisor, and I wouldn’t have had any success without him.”

Sierra A. Knavel

“I was enthusiastic to hear about receiving the award,” Knavel says, “and eager to join a community that wants to help each other succeed while at Georgia Tech.”

Knavel, whose research interests include low-dimensional topology, has Professor John Etnyre as an adviser. “He is the reason I can say I'm in the math Ph.D. program, and that I know I belong here.”

Tony Lemos

“When I applied to the UCEM fellowship, I had doubts that I was accomplished enough to be chosen for this fellowship,” Lemos says. “When I received the email announcing that I had been selected for this award, it was a great surprise, and I was immediately filled with immense gratitude. I am very thankful to be one of the students to receive this gift that will help me become the first in my family to obtain a doctoral degree.”

Lemos is a research assistant in the biophysics lab of Professor Harold Kim, who is his adviser. “He has been a great mentor who helped me get this far at Georgia Tech. He is a great role model that showed me what it means to be an effective scientist. He also challenged me to grow in areas I was uncomfortable with in the lab. I am thankful for his mentorship and unending support.”

Autumn Peterson

“I was super excited to hear that I was named a UCEM Ph.D. Fellow,” Peterson says. “Mentorship has always been important to me. I would not be in the position I am in now without mentors who have supported me throughout my academic career. I am looking forward to strengthening my mentorship skills and serving as a role model for aspiring scientists coming from underrepresented backgrounds like I do.”

Peterson’s adviser is Associate Professor William Ratcliff, who is also Co-Director of the Interdisciplinary Ph.D. in Quantitative Biosciences. ‘I want to thank him for his immense support throughout my academic journey. I would also like to thank Anthony Burnetti, a senior research scientist in the Ratcliff lab. Both Ratcliff and Burnetti are both extremely supportive, kind, and knowledgeable, and I am grateful to have them as mentors.”

Earlier this year, Peterson and Ratcliff were co-awarded a Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) Gilliam Fellowship for Advanced Study.

“We are so proud of our UCEM/C-PIES Fellows," says Lea Marzo, C-PIES Program Operations Director. "The students selected for this fellowship are brilliant researchers and we are delighted that Georgia Tech’s Office of the President is making an investment in their success. We cannot wait to see what the future has in store for these fellows."

Subtitle

With goals to boost science, engineering, and computing Ph.D. researchers from underserved populations, UCEM grows in 2023 to include students from Schools of Biological Sciences, Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, Mathematics, and Physics

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Tue, 10/10/2023 - 12:00

renay.san@cos.gatech.edu

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UCEM (University Center of Exemplary Mentoring) Ph.D. Fellowship

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Lewis Wheaton

Danielle Grau

Sierra Knavel

Tony Lemos

Autumn Peterson

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Source updated

Tue, 10/17/2023 - 17:49

Machine Learning Could be Key to Early Leakage Detection in Underground Carbon Storage Sites

admin — Mon, 13 May 2024 14:38:41 +0000

Machine Learning Could be Key to Early Leakage Detection in Underground Carbon Storage Sites admin Mon, 05/13/2024 - 10:38

A new machine learning method could help engineers detect leaks in underground reservoirs earlier, mitigating risks associated with geological carbon storage (GCS). Further study could advance machine learning capabilities while improving safety and efficiency of GCS.

The feasibility study by Georgia Tech researchers explores using conditional normalizing flows (CNFs) to convert seismic data points into usable information and observable images. This potential ability could make monitoring underground storage sites more practical and studying the behavior of carbon dioxide plumes easier.

The 2023 Conference on Neural Information Processing Systems (NeurIPS 2023) accepted the group’s paper for presentation. They presented their study on Dec. 16 at the conference’s workshop on Tackling Climate Change with Machine Learning.

“One area where our group excels is that we care about realism in our simulations,” said Professor Felix Herrmann. “We worked on a real-sized setting with the complexities one would experience when working in real-life scenarios to understand the dynamics of carbon dioxide plumes.”

CNFs are generative models that use data to produce images. They can also fill in the blanks by making predictions to complete an image despite missing or noisy data. This functionality is ideal for this application because data streaming from GCS reservoirs are often noisy, meaning it’s incomplete, outdated, or unstructured data.

The group found in 36 test samples that CNFs could infer scenarios with and without leakage using seismic data. In simulations with leakage, the models generated images that were 96% similar to ground truths. CNFs further supported this by producing images 97% comparable to ground truths in cases with no leakage.

This CNF-based method also improves current techniques that struggle to provide accurate information on the spatial extent of leakage. Conditioning CNFs to samples that change over time allows it to describe and predict the behavior of carbon dioxide plumes.

This study is part of the group’s broader effort to produce digital twins for seismic monitoring of underground storage. A digital twin is a virtual model of a physical object. Digital twins are commonplace in manufacturing, healthcare, environmental monitoring, and other industries.

“There are very few digital twins in earth sciences, especially based on machine learning,” Herrmann explained. “This paper is just a prelude to building an uncertainty aware digital twin for geological carbon storage.”

Herrmann holds joint appointments in the Schools of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences (EAS), Electrical and Computer Engineering, and Computational Science and Engineering (CSE).

School of EAS Ph.D. student Abhinov Prakash Gahlot is the paper’s first author. Ting-Ying (Rosen) Yu (B.S. ECE 2023) started the research as an undergraduate group member. School of CSE Ph.D. students Huseyin Tuna Erdinc, Rafael Orozco, and Ziyi (Francis) Yin co-authored with Gahlot and Herrmann.

NeurIPS 2023 took place Dec. 10-16 in New Orleans. Occurring annually, it is one of the largest conferences in the world dedicated to machine learning.

Over 130 Georgia Tech researchers presented more than 60 papers and posters at NeurIPS 2023. One-third of CSE’s faculty represented the School at the conference. Along with Herrmann, these faculty included Ümit Çatalyürek, Polo Chau, Bo Dai, Srijan Kumar, Yunan Luo, Anqi Wu, and Chao Zhang.

“In the field of geophysics, inverse problems and statistical solutions of these problems are known, but no one has been able to characterize these statistics in a realistic way,” Herrmann said.

“That’s where these machine learning techniques come into play, and we can do things now that you could never do before.”

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Wed, 12/20/2023 - 12:00

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Mon, 05/13/2024 - 10:37

CMDI: Mighty Microbial Dynamics for a Healthier People and Planet

admin — Thu, 15 Feb 2024 20:27:56 +0000

CMDI: Mighty Microbial Dynamics for a Healthier People and Planet admin Thu, 02/15/2024 - 15:27

Shaping the shared future of microbes and human health is the mission for Georgia Tech’s Center for Microbial Dynamics and Infection (CMDI).

Yes, there are similar academic-based centers studying infectious diseases and the microbes that cause them, but to understand what makes Georgia Tech’s center different, Sam Brown, CMDI co-director and a professor in the School of Biological Sciences, says to concentrate on that third letter in the Center's name.

“Focus on dynamics,” says Brown. “That’s basically how microbes are changing over time and space as well as how they’re changing systems in time. This notion of dynamics operates on different scales. It operates, as I see it, on a behavioral scale — individual bugs making decisions and changing their behavior in time.”

Ecological dynamics are “how populations are changing with time, and how they’re interacting with other communities — for example in biofilms,” Brown adds, referring to the name for communities of microorganisms that stick to surfaces and create their own “neighborhoods.”

There are also evolutionary dynamics, which are worrying to Brown and other researchers, as they can mean bacteria increase resistance to antibiotics. And then there are epidemiological dynamics.

“We’re all glued to our screens watching the epidemiological dynamics of Covid-19 play out in real time,” he explains.

All of this involves the study of some of the natural world’s tiniest troublemakers — and helpers. Humans are pathetically outnumbered by microbes. They live in, on, and around all of us. They are at both ends of the human food chain, helping farmers grow food, and then assisting us in digesting our meals.

“You have trillions of bacteria in your gut,” points out Marvin Whiteley, CMDI’s founding co-director who serves as a professor in the School of Biological Sciences, Georgia Tech Bennie H. and Nelson D. Abell Chair in Molecular and Cellular Biology, Georgia Research Alliance Eminent Scholar and co-director for Emory-Children’s CF Center. So, in the spectrum of these tiny communities, there are helpful and harmful microbes alike — and the latter can often make us very sick. That’s where CMDI experts step in.

“CMDI is working to transform how we study microbes in an environmental context, and ultimately find new microbial strategies to improve human and environmental health,” Brown says.

CMDI’s science is conducted in an interdisciplinary manner, like many other research centers at Georgia Tech, with research that reaches into a number of other disciplines — microbial ecology, microbiome dynamics, biogeochemistry, microbial biophysics, socio-microbiology, infection dynamics, host-pathogen interactions, marine and aquatic microbiology, microbial evolution, viral ecology, spatial imaging, and math/computational modeling.

The Center is fairly new, beginning operations in 2018. Yet it’s already closing in on 100 researchers — faculty, graduate students, and postdoctoral students — and is aggressively recruiting early career scientists from around the world to research at CMDI.

“We are a unique interdisciplinary research center since our expertise spans such broad subjects from coral reef ecosystems, to antibiotic resistant bacteria, to new infectious diseases therapies,” explains Maria Avdonina, CMDI manager.

Building CMDI’s foundation, and using it to attack P. aeruginosa

“How does a pathogen do what it does at the molecular level?” Marvin Whiteley asks.

It is a question that he began asking at The University of Texas at Austin, where he founded another center to study infectious disease before coming to Georgia Tech in 2017. Back then, Whiteley was looking for the kind of interdisciplinary mix of researchers that can be found widely across the Institute, so he moved to Atlanta and built that into the CMDI’s mission as its founding co-director.

“It’s the idea of not just working with pure microbiologists, but working with those interested in how things change, and their dynamic aspects, even daily changes in the microbiome,” he says, referring to the term used to describe all the microorganisms that live in a particular environment, whether it’s a human body or a body of land or water. “It requires modelers — people used to looking at big data sets — and people who think about evolutionary biology. It’s a unique kind of expertise that I don’t have in my lab, but the folks who work for me in the lab can take advantage of it within CMDI.”

Whiteley’s research interests include the study of cystic fibrosis (CF), a genetic disease that results in bacteria chronically attacking the lungs of its patients. To combat disease, Whiteley is focusing research on Pseudomonas aeruginosa (P. aeruginosa), a particularly dangerous bacteria that’s often found in CF patients’ lungs. He notes that the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) lists it as one of the primary pathogens that is cause for clinical concern.

“It lives in nature, but we published a paper showing it’s not everywhere. It’s located near human activity, so wherever we are, it seems to grow and do really well. It’s in a lot of different diseases — and CF is one of them.”

P. aeruginosa is also “a really important cause of wound infections,” Whiteley adds, citing a CDC estimate that by 2050, about 20 percent of the entire U.S. healthcare budget could be spent treating chronic wound infections.

“The biggest problem in environments where it’s problematic is hospitals,” he says. “It’s very tolerant of antimicrobials, and it acquires resistance fairly quickly. That causes it to enrich in its environment.”

Taking on Covid-19

Joshua Weitz, who is a CMDI faculty member, professor and Tom and Marie Patton Chair in Biological Sciences, and founding director of the Interdisciplinary Ph.D. in Quantitative Biosciences program, is a key scientist behind Georgia Tech’s Covid-19 surveillance testing efforts, along with Covid-19 event risk and population immunity modeling research around nation and beyond.

Weitz has led a series of concurrent efforts to estimate epidemiological characteristics of SARS-CoV-2, develop novel approaches to use large-scale testing as an intervention, and leverage mathematical models and real-time datasets to inform the public of ongoing transmission risk.

Weitz recently received a best paper award from the Georgia Tech Chapter of Sigma Xi for his work on the Covid-19 Event Risk Assessment Planning Tool, which calculates the odds of being exposed to an infected individual in groups of different sizes; it has received more than 8 million unique visitors who have generated more than 40 million risk estimates since the planning tool’s launch in July 2020.

Weitz also joined fellow faculty and staff in sharing an Institute Research Award and Institute Service Award in recognition of collective efforts to design, develop, implement, deploy an asymptomatic SARS-CoV-2 saliva-based testing program to address the coronavirus pandemic across campus. “We’re very proud of what Joshua has done,” Sam Brown says, “both in the context of Covid-19 and also in exploring new therapeutic angles for bacterial infections, by harnessing the viral natural enemies of bacteria: phages.”

The search for new antibiotics — and how best to use them

While Covid-19 is a virus that has dominated headlines since early 2020, bacterial resistance to antibiotics has been a problem for decades. Penicillin was first available as an antibiotic in 1941. Staphylococcus aureus was found to be resistant to it as early as 1942.

CMDI faculty member Julia Kubanek, a professor of in the School of Biological Sciences and School of Chemistry and Biochemistry, former associate dean for Research in the College of Sciences and newly appointed vice president for Interdisciplinary Research (VPIR) for all of Georgia Tech, has spent the past 17 years diving into the waters near Fiji and the Solomon Islands, looking for natural marine products that could fill that widening gap in resistance-free drugs.

“It’s been a long time since entirely new classes of antibiotics were brought to market,” Kubanek explains. “Pharmaceutical companies have reduced their investments in antibiotic drug discovery, despite the continuing rise of antimicrobial resistance among existing drugs. More resistant strains of infectious bacteria and fungi are evolving constantly and present severe threats to public health.”

The Covid-19 pandemic is a related example. It has revealed that science’s arsenal of antiviral drugs is inadequate, she notes.

Kubanek and CMDI faculty colleague Mark Hay, Regents Professor and Harry and Linda Teasley Chair in the School of Biological Sciences, are both part of Georgia Tech’s drug discovery program, which looks at small molecule natural products from marine organisms as sources for potential future medicines against infectious diseases.

A partnership with Emory University School of Medicine helps researchers screen Georgia Tech’s natural product library — what Kubanek and her research team found on those South Pacific trips — for potential drug candidates has resulted in encouraging news for viruses like SARS-CoV-2, the specific coronavirus that causes Covid-19.

“We’re currently following three promising classes of natural products from marine algae and sponges that show preliminary activity against this coronavirus,” Kubanek says. Those molecules are distinct from currently marketed antivirals and antibiotics, and that could mean more weapons in science’s arsenal for fighting infectious diseases.

CMDI researchers also approach the antibiotic resistance crisis through an epidemiological and evolutionary lens. For example, recent work from the Brown Lab has identified new strategies to slow or even reverse the increase in drug-resistant strains, by changing how doctors dose their drugs, and how they make use of diagnostic information.

Microbes, climate, and environmental health

Beyond human infections and pathogen control, CMDI also focuses on the significant impacts that microbes have on human and environmental health. CMDI faculty member Joel Kostka, professor and associate chair of Research in the School of Biological Sciences who also serves as a professor in the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, is a leading researcher in environmental microbiology, bringing the power of “omics” technologies to discover the role of environmental microbes in shaping key aspects of our shared world, from bioremediation to climate change.

Kostka’s work led to the discovery of key marine microbes that played an important role in cleaning up the oil spilled during the 2010 Deepwater Horizon Disaster — microbes that turned out to be abundant in oil-contaminated soils around the world.

Kostka’s work in this space “revealed a natural capacity for rare microbes in the Gulf of Mexico to catalyze the bioremediation, or natural cleanup, of petroleum hydrocarbons,” he explains. “These microbes show promise as biological indicators to direct emergency response efforts, as well as to elucidate the impacts of oil exposure on ecosystem health during oil spills and other environmental disasters,” he adds.

The Kostka Lab has also long characterized the role of the environment in shaping microbial communities that limit the release of greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide and methane into the atmosphere.

In a large scale climate change experiment that’s being conducted in northern Minnesota with funding by the U.S. Department of Energy, Kostka’s research recently showed that warming accelerates the production of greenhouse gases from soil microbial respiration — and that microbial activity “was fueled by the release of plant metabolites, suggesting that enhanced greenhouse gas production is likely to persist and result in amplified climate feedbacks.”

“Joel is our key player in this space,” Brown says. “He’s done incredible research on how the environment can dictate microbial species abundance and their behavioral contributions to the functioning of Earth’s ecosystems. He’s shown that different ‘taxa’, or groups of organisms, become metabolically active or ‘switched on’ depending on environmental factors like temperature. His research contributes to building better climate models as well as to develop new geoengineering strategies to adapt to climate change. He’s doing beautiful work.”

CMDI’s global call to early career microbiologists

CMDI’s research is funded by grants from agencies like the National Science Foundation and National Institutes of Health to individual labs run by faculty — and by money distributed directly to the Center from across Georgia Tech, including the College of Sciences and its Office of the Dean and Sutherland Dean's Chair.

These sources “are getting healthier by the minute, and that’s a testament to the scientists at the Center,” Brown points out — so much so that two new positions have recently been created: a senior research scientist who will assist postdoctoral and graduate students with grant and fellowship applications, and a CMDI Early Career Award Fellowship that seeks out “superstars, people who are going to go on to be faculty success stories.”

“We want to get them early,” Brown says. “We’re interviewing some great candidates just out of their Ph.D.s. We’ll give them maximum independence, their own space, their own office, their own pot of money. They’ll be sitting at the intersection of our research interests but can run their own lab and their own research program.”

This allows postdoctoral students to focus on research projects, Julia Kubanek says. “Because postdocs generally don’t enroll in formal courses, nor are they generally expected to teach in the classroom, they get to immerse themselves in research in collaboration with faculty, students, and other postdocs. The CMDI is rapidly growing as a collaborative environment, where postdocs can try out their best ideas and learn from others how to tackle the most pressing scientific questions in microbial dynamics, microbial communication, ecosystem health, and infectious disease.” Kubanek adds that a related fellowship program “will augment postdoctoral salaries to attract the very best candidates, enabling grant dollars to stretch further, leading to new discoveries.”

The Center is also ratcheting up outreach, including what it calls its "Research Envoys Program." The intitiative features graduate students giving seminars at local institutions throughout the Atlanta area, including at historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs). Although it’s mostly on pause right now due to the pandemic, two Ph.D. students and a postdoctoral student working with CMDI faculty member Brian Hammer — a professor in the School of Biological Sciences who is also chair of the Institute Undergraduate Curriculum Committee, and co-director of the Aquatic Chemical Ecology Research Experiences for Undergraduates (REU) program — recently gave remote seminars at Spelman College and Kennesaw State University.

“Our trainees get practice in speaking, and it opens doors to folks seeing Georgia Tech as an option,” Brown explains. The CMDI is also working with Georgia Tech’s Institute Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion and the Southern Regional Education Board to continue to increase the number of underrepresented minorities at all levels of recruitment.

“We’re really interested in educating the next generation of scientists in biology,” Whiteley adds. “Everybody says that — but we’re actually developing programs to recruit the best talent in the world.”

CMDI research areas and faculty:

Sam Brown

Virulence, microbiomes, biofilms, cystic fibrosis

Steve Diggle

Biofilms, virulence

Neha Garg

Cystic fibrosis, coral reef microbial disease

Brian Hammer

Vibrio cholerae (cholera), microbial interactions

Mark Hay

Marine ecology/coral reefs

Joel Kostka

Environmental microbiology, biogeochemistry, microbiomes, wetlands, bioremediation

Julia Kubanek

Natural product drug discovery, marine chemical ecology

William Ratcliff

Multicellular evolution, biofilm dynamics

Frank Rosenzweig

Cellular genomics and evolution

Peter Yunker

Soft matter physics, biofilms, multicellular evolution

Joshua Weitz

Viruses/viral modeling, bacteriophages, microbial ecology/evolution

Marvin Whiteley

Microbial ecology/virulence, Pseudomonas aeruginosa, cystic fibrosis

Learn more about each faculty member’s area of research on the CMDI website.

Writer: Renay San Miguel

Editors and Contributors: Jess Hunt-Ralston, Joel Kostka, Joshua Weitz, Julia Kubanek, Maria Avdonina, Marvin Whiteley, Sam Brown

Summary sentence

CMDI merges disciplines, aggressively recruiting microbiologist ‘superstars’ to take back the high ground from antibiotic-resistant pathogens and emerging diseases — and to harness microbes for new medicines, cleaner environments, and climate solutions.

Summary

Georgia Tech’s Center for Microbial Dynamics and Infection (CMDI) merges disciplines, aggressively recruiting microbiologist ‘superstars’ to take back the high ground from antibiotic-resistant pathogens and emerging diseases — and to harness microbes to provide new medicines, cleaner environments, and solutions to the challenges of climate change.

Dateline

Thu, 08/05/2021 - 12:00

renay.san@cos.gatech.edu

Contact

Renay San Miguel
Communications Officer II/Science Writer
College of Sciences
404-894-5209

Keywords

College of Sciences

CMDI

School of Biological Sciences

School of Chemistry and Biochemistry

Samuel Brown

Marvin Whiteley

Julia Kubanek

Mark Hay

Joel Kostka

viruses

Microbiology

bacteria

covid-19

School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences

go-researchnews

go-bio

News room topics

Health and Medicine

Categories

Biotechnology, Health, Bioengineering, Genetics

Chemistry and Chemical Engineering

Life Sciences and Biology

Research

Student Research

Mercury ID

647519

Source updated

Thu, 02/15/2024 - 15:27

Study Reveals Wintertime Formation of Large Pollution Particles in China’s Skies

admin — Fri, 17 Nov 2023 14:12:41 +0000

Study Reveals Wintertime Formation of Large Pollution Particles in China’s Skies admin Fri, 11/17/2023 - 09:12

Previous studies have found that the particles that float in the haze over the skies of Beijing include sulfate, a major source of outdoor air pollution that damages lungs and aggravates existing asthmatic symptoms, according to the California Air Resources Board.

Sulfates usually are produced by atmospheric oxidation in the summer, when ample sunlight facilitates the oxidation that turns sulfur dioxide into dangerous aerosol particles. How is it that China can produce such extreme pollution loaded with sulfates in the winter, when there’s not as much sunlight and atmospheric oxidation is slow?

Yuhang Wang, professor in the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at Georgia Tech, and his research team have conducted a study that may have the answer: All the chemical reactions needed to turn sulfur dioxide into sulfur trioxide, and then quickly into sulfate, primarily happen within the smoke plumes causing the pollution. That process not only creates sulfates in the winter in China, but it also happens faster and results in larger sulfate particles in the atmosphere.

“We call the source ‘in-source formation,’” Wang says. “Instead of having oxidants spread out in the atmosphere, slowly oxidizing sulfur dioxide into sulfur trioxide to produce sulfate, we have this concentrated production in the exhaust plumes that turns the sulfuric acid into large sulfate particles. And that's why we're seeing these large sulfate particles in China.”

The findings of in-source formation of larger wintertime sulfate particles in China could help scientists accurately assess the impacts of aerosols on radiative forcing — how climate change and global warming impact the Earth’s energy and heat balances — and on health, where larger aerosols means larger deposits into human lungs.

“Wintertime Formation of Large Sulfate Particles in China and Implications for Human Health,” is published in Environmental Science & Technology, an American Chemical Society publication. The co-authors include Qianru Zhang of Peking University and Mingming Zheng of Wuhan Polytechnic University, two of Wang’s former students who conducted the research while at Georgia Tech.

Explaining a historic smog

China still burns a lot of coal in power plants because its costs are lower compared to natural gas, Wang says. It also makes for an easy comparison between China’s hazy winters and a historic event that focused the United Kingdom’s attention on dangerous environmental hazards — the Great London Smog.

The event, depicted in the Netflix show “The Crown,” saw severe smog descend on London in December 1952. Unusually cold weather preceded the event, which brought the coal-produced haze down to ground level. UK officials later said the Great London Smog (also called the Great London Fog) was responsible for 4,000 deaths and 100,000 illnesses, although later studies estimated a higher death toll of 10,000 to 20,000.

“From the days of the London Fog to extreme winter pollution in China, it has been a challenge to explain how sulfate is produced in the winter,” Wang says.

Wang and his team decided to take on that challenge.

Aerosol size and heavy metal influence?

The higher sulfate levels in China, notably in January 2013, defy conventional explanations that relied on standard photochemical oxidation. It was thought that nitrogen dioxide or other mild oxidants found in alkaline or neutral particles in the atmosphere were the cause. But measurements revealed the resulting sulfate particles were highly acidic.

During Zheng’s time at Georgia Tech, “She was just looking for interesting things to do,” Wang says of the former student. “And I said, maybe this is what we should do — I wanted her to look at aerosol size distributions, how large the aerosols are.”

Zheng and Wang noticed that the size of the sulfate particles from China’s winter were much larger than those that resulted from photochemically-produced aerosols. Usually measuring 0.3 to 0.5 microns, the sulfate was closer to 1 micron in size. (A human hair is about 70 microns.) Aerosols distributed over a wider area would normally be smaller.

“The micron-sized aerosol observations imply that sulfate particles undergo substantial growth in a sulfur trioxide-rich environment,” Wang says. Larger particles increase the risks to human health.

“When aerosols are large, more is deposited in the front part of the respiratory system but less on the end part, such as alveoli,” he adds. “When accounting for the large size of particles, total aerosol deposition in the human respiratory system is estimated to increase by 10 to 30 percent.”

Something still needs to join the chemical mix, however, so the sulfur dioxide could turn into sulfur trioxide while enlarging the resulting sulfate particles. Wang says a potential pathway involves the catalytic oxidation of sulfur dioxide to sulfuric acid by “transition metals.”

High temperatures, acidity, and water content in the exhaust can greatly accelerate catalytic sulfur dioxide oxidation “compared to that in the ambient atmosphere. It is possible that similar heterogeneous processes occurring on the hot surface of a smokestack coated with transition metals could explain the significant portion of sulfur trioxide observed in coal-fired power plant exhaust,” Wang says.

“A significant amount of sulfur trioxide is produced, either during combustion or through metal-catalyzed oxidation at elevated temperatures.”

An opportunity for cleaner-burning coal power plants

The impact of in-source formation of sulfate suggests that taking measures to cool off and remove sulfur trioxide, sulfuric acid, and particulates from the emissions of coal-combustion facilities could be a way to cut down on pollution that can cause serious health problems.

“The development and implementation of such technology will benefit nations globally, particularly those heavily reliant on coal as a primary energy source,” Wang says.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.est.3c05645

Funding: This study was funded by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (nos. 41821005 and 41977311). Yuhang Wang was supported by the National Science Foundation Atmospheric Chemistry Program. Qianru Zhang would also like to thank the China Postdoctoral Science Foundation (2022M720005) and China Scholarship Council for support. Mingming Zheng is also supported by the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities, Peking University (7100604309).

Subtitle

School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences researchers find dangerous sulfates are formed, and their particles get bigger, within the plumes of pollution belching from coal-fired power plants.

Summary sentence

School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences researchers find dangerous sulfates are formed, and their particles get bigger, within the plumes of pollution belching from coal-fired power plants.

Summary

School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences researchers find dangerous sulfates are formed, and their particles get bigger, within the plumes of pollution belching from coal-fired power plants.

Dateline

Thu, 11/16/2023 - 12:00

renay.san@cos.gatech.edu

Contact

Writer: Renay San Miguel
Communications Officer II/Science Writer
College of Sciences
404-894-5209

Editor: Jess Hunt-Ralston

Keywords

College of Sciences

School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences

Yuhang Wang

aerosols

China air pollution

sulfates

cos-research

cos-planetary

cos-climate

go-researchnews

News room topics

Earth and Environment

Categories

Energy

Environment

Life Sciences and Biology

Research

Student and Faculty

Mercury ID

671132

Source updated

Fri, 11/17/2023 - 09:12

Six Sciences Graduate Scholars Join the Ranks of Haley Fellows

dgivens8 — Mon, 23 Oct 2023 15:40:12 +0000

Six Sciences Graduate Scholars Join the Ranks of Haley Fellows dgivens8 Mon, 10/23/2023 - 11:40

The College of Sciences congratulates six of its graduate scholars who have won Herbert P. Haley Fellowships for the 2023-24 school year.

The new Haley Fellows are:

Haley scholars receive a one-time merit award of up to $4,000 thanks to the generosity of the late Marion Peacock Haley. Haley’s estate established the creation of merit-based graduate fellowships at Georgia Tech in honor of her late husband, Herbert P. Haley (ME 1933). It is an award which may be held in conjunction with other funding, assistantships, or fellowships, if applicable.

Meet the Haley Fellows

Jessica Deutsch

Jessica Deutsch is a fifth-year Ph.D. student studying analytical chemistry. “One of the most intriguing aspects of analytical chemistry is that the field focuses on studying invisible things in order to make sense of the visible,” Deuthsch says. “I am researching a deadly coral disease that affects Florida and Caribbean reefs. I aim to provide insight into how this disease impacts the production of small molecules using a mass spectrometry-based approach, which can provide insight into how relationships between the coral animal, algae, and bacteria may be impacted by this disease.”

She wishes to thank Assistant Professor Neha Garg “for her mentorship and the opportunities she has provided that have enabled me to develop my research skills.”

Quynh Nguyen

Quynh Nguyen is a third-year Ph.D. student looking into phase- and shape-controlled synthesis of nanocrystals for catalysis and energy-related applications. “What fascinates me is the ability to manipulate matter at the nanoscale to drive sustainable advances,” Nguyen says. “This field places me at the exciting intersection of chemistry, materials science, and nanotechnology, aiming to address current challenges in sustainability and renewable energy.”

Nguyen’s Ph.D. advisor is Younan Xia, professor, Brock Family Chair and Georgia Research Alliance Eminent Scholar in Nanomedicine. “Xia's guidance and expertise have been instrumental in shaping my research focus and methodology. Beyond the lab, he has consistently encouraged me to pursue opportunities that contribute to both my academic and professional development, for which I am immensely grateful.”

Eliza Gazda

Eliza Gazda, a fifth-year graduate scholar, is working in the field of multi-messenger particle astrophysics.

Gazda designed, tested, and integrated a telescope camera which was the payload on a scientific balloon launched in May. “The telescope launched is the first optical balloon of this type that operated at high altitudes over 30 kilometers,” Gazda says. “Our telescope observed radiative air showers from high energy cosmic rays and particles which travel across the Earth from extreme astrophysical objects like neutron stars and black holes. Once analyzed, this work will give us insight into high energy events that occur in space, and allow us to design and launch future similar telescopes.”

Gazda’s mentor is Associate Professor Nepomuk Otte, “who guided me in the past through a summer internship at Georgia Tech and inspired me to come back to work on my Ph.D. here. Not only has he taught me lab skills, but he helps me with my career goals, and guides me in exploring our research field, networking, and learning about various disciplines within the field.”

Sydney Popsuj

A fifth-year Ph.D. student, Sydney Popsuj is researching the gene Dkk3 and how it might regulate neurodevelopment and neurodegeneration in tunicates, close siblings to vertebrates. “This gene is implicated in Alzheimer's disease and dementia, but because it is hard to study in disease models, we don't have a strong grasp on the general functionality of the gene. I am using tunicates as a model system to study because they are biphasic, meaning they have both a larval and adult stage. This work is very exciting to me because it incorporates large scale evolutionary questions, while also having an impact on better understanding a gene that seems quite important to diseases and disorders.”

Popsuj thanks Georgia Tech faculty members Shuyi Nie, Joe LaChance, Patrick McGrath, Tim Cope, and Billie Swalla at the University of Washington “for pushing me to find new and exciting avenues into how to relate and generalize my work. These mentors have also encouraged me to expand outside my comfort zone in academics and to embrace new technologies and approaches that will hopefully further expand methods and protocols available to tunicate researchers.”

Jose Luis Ramirez-Colón

A third-year graduate scholar, Jose Luis Ramirez-Colón “has always been fascinated by the question of where we come from, and my time at Georgia Tech has been dedicated to using science as a tool to further explore this question.” His research focuses on exploring the organic inventory present in carbonaceous chondrites, meteorites that are like time capsules from the early days of the Solar System.

“Many organic classes present in all life as we know it, such as amino acids, sugars, and nucleobases, have been detected in these meteorites; therefore, there’s this idea that these meteorites might've delivered these essential building blocks to early Earth to kick-start life as we know it,” Ramirez-Colón says. His mission at Georgia Tech is to develop methods to detect, extract, and characterize those building blocks.

Ramirez-Colón wants to acknowledge “the remarkable contributions of my advisor and mentor, Christopher Carr, who has played a pivotal role in propelling my journey as an advancing Puerto Rican scientist. Carr not only granted me the freedom to pursue the questions that have always ignited my passion for science, but also equipped me with the essential tools and resources needed to conduct meaningful research.”

Sidney Scott-Sharoni

Sidney Scott-Sharoni is entering her fourth year of Ph.D. studies. An engineering psychology major, Scott-Sharoni focuses on “understanding how humans interact and conceptualize artificial intelligence devices,” she explains.

“Specifically, I investigate creative methods to convey information to calibrate users’ trust, and understand their psychological well-being, most often in automated vehicles,” Scott-Sharoni says. “I love my area of research because it combines the study of people with the study of innovative technology. I feel like I am researching the people of the future!”

Scott-Sharoni’s advisor, Professor Bruce Walker, “has significantly helped my personal and professional development as a researcher. I am very grateful for his continued mentorship throughout my graduate education.”

Subtitle

The College of Sciences graduate students were chosen as 2023-24 Herbert P. Haley Fellowships for their research and academic achievements

Summary sentence

The College of Sciences graduate students were chosen as 2023-24 Herbert P. Haley Fellowships for their research and academic achievements

Summary

The College of Sciences graduate students were chosen as 2023-24 Herbert P. Haley Fellowships for their research and academic achievements.

Dateline

Wed, 09/20/2023 - 12:00

renay.san@cos.gatech.edu

Contact

Writer: Renay San Miguel
Communications Officer II/Science Writer
College of Sciences
404-894-5209

Editor: Jess Hunt-Ralston

Keywords

College of Sciences

School of Chemistry and Biochemistry

School of Biological Sciences

School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences

School of Physics

School of Psychology

Jessica Deutsch

Quynh Nguyen

Eliza Gazda

Sydney Popsuj

Jose Luis Ramirez-Colón

Sidney Scott-Sharoni

Herbert P. Haley Fellowships

graduate students

Categories

Chemistry and Chemical Engineering

Life Sciences and Biology

Physics and Physical Sciences

Student and Faculty

Student Honors and Achievements

Mercury ID

669798

Source updated

Tue, 10/17/2023 - 17:49

New Georgia Tech Environmental Science Degree Launches

admin — Wed, 14 Jun 2023 02:41:31 +0000

New Georgia Tech Environmental Science Degree Launches admin Tue, 06/13/2023 - 22:41

Georgia Tech’s newest interdisciplinary degree program, the Environmental Science B.S. degree (ENVS), developed jointly by faculty of the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences and the School of Biological Sciences, has launched and is now enrolling students.

The ENVS degree will provide a strong foundation in the basic sciences, requiring core content in mathematics, physics, chemistry, biology, earth sciences, and environmental policy. Flexible electives in upper-level coursework will allow students to customize their program of study to their interest and career goals.

A launch event for the degree program will take place at the Kendeda Building on the afternoon of Friday, August 25, 2023.

“The new degree will prepare students to be future leaders who are well-versed on how the Earth's systems can be influenced by human activity and contribute to human well-being,” says Greg Huey, professor and chair of the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences. “Graduates will be positioned to be leaders in industry, academia, education, and communication to create innovative solutions to the most significant environmental challenges of our time.”

Two faculty members in the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences (EAS) and a faculty member in the School of Biological Sciences will serve as inaugural leadership: Jennifer Glass, associate professor, is program director; Samantha Wilson, academic professional, is director of Undergraduate Studies; and Linda Green, senior academic professional in the School of Biological Sciences, is director of Experiential Learning.

The foundational science classes in this new degree will be complemented by courses in Public Policy and City Planning, including Geographical Information Systems (GIS) and Environmental Policy and Politics, before opening up and providing students with flexibility in course options to better fit their career paths and interests.

“Past EAS students have been interested in careers related to environmental consulting, environmental law, and continuing their studies in graduate school,” Wilson says. “The variety of environmental career paths was the driver behind allowing students to diversify their options within the degree.”

“This degree will give Georgia Tech students a unique opportunity to customize their environmental science program of study to their interests and career goals in science, policy, public service, non-profit, government, industry, academia, or beyond,” adds Glass. “We are committed to building an academic community in ENVS that values student leadership, ethics, justice, accessibility, and belonging.”

Hands-on learning opportunities will include field station experiences and field trip excursions, study abroad programs, and internships, Green says. “This major sustains the Institute’s strategic plan to lead by example, champion innovation, and connect globally — particularly in an area so critical as addressing Earth’s environmental issues.”

Glass added that the Schools of Chemistry, Biological Sciences, and Earth and Atmospheric Sciences are currently revamping several classes to meet United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Students will advance to be global leaders of environmental solutions that draw upon the U.N. Sustainable Development Goals and incorporate awareness of cultural relevance.

“We can’t wait for August to celebrate the ENVS launch with our incoming and current students,” Glass says.

More information on the Environment Science (ENVS) degree:

General information: jennifer.glass@eas.gatech.edu

Curriculum and enrollment: samantha.wilson@eas.gatech.edu

Co-curricular initiatives: linda.green@gatech.edu

Learn more: Three new EAS undergraduate degrees

Beginning Summer 2023, prospective and current Georgia Tech students will have three new Bachelor of Science degrees to choose from in the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences. The expanded undergraduate offerings target a wider range of job and research opportunities — from academia to analytics, NASA to NOAA, meteorology to marine science, climate and earth science, to policy, law, consulting, sustainability, and beyond.

The Board of Regents of the University System of Georgia has approved two new specific degrees within the School: Atmospheric and Ocean Sciences (AOS) and Solid Earth and Planetary Sciences (SEP). Regents also approved Environmental Science (ENVS) as an interdisciplinary College of Sciences degree between the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences and the School of Biological Sciences. The existing Earth and Atmospheric Sciences B.S. degree will sunset in two years for new students. Learn more.

Subtitle

The interdisciplinary Environmental Science (ENVS) degree program, developed by faculty in the Schools of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences and Biological Sciences, is now enrolling students interested in a wide variety of environment-related careers.

Summary sentence

Summary

Dateline

Tue, 06/13/2023 - 12:00

renay.san@cos.gatech.edu

Contact

Writer: Renay San Miguel
Communications Officer II/Science Writer
College of Sciences
404-894-5209

Editor: Jess Hunt-Ralston

Keywords

College of Sciences

School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences

School of Biological Sciences

environmental science

environmental science degree

ENVS

jennifer glass

Samantha Wilson

Linda Green

greg huey

cos-climate

cos-students

cos-planetary

News room topics

Earth and Environment

Categories

Environment

Institute and Campus

Student and Faculty

Student Research

Mercury ID

668065

Source updated

Tue, 06/13/2023 - 22:32

Robot Provides Unprecedented Views Below Antarctic Ice Shelf

admin — Fri, 03 Mar 2023 22:59:05 +0000

Robot Provides Unprecedented Views Below Antarctic Ice Shelf admin Fri, 03/03/2023 - 17:59

The following story by James A. Dean, Cornell Chronicle, first appeared in the Cornell University newsroom.

High in a narrow, seawater-filled crevasse in the base of Antarctica’s largest ice shelf, cameras on the remotely operated Icefin underwater vehicle relayed a sudden change in scenery.

Walls of smooth, cloudy meteoric ice abruptly turned green and rougher in texture, transitioning to salty marine ice.

Nearly 1,900 feet above, near where the surface of the Ross Ice Shelf meets Kamb Ice Stream, a U.S.-New Zealand research team recognized the shift as evidence of “ice pumping” – a process never before directly observed in an ice shelf crevasse, important to its stability.

“We were looking at ice that had just melted less than 100 feet below, flowed up into the crevasse and then refrozen,” said Justin Lawrence, visiting scholar at the Cornell Center for Astrophysics and Planetary Science. “And then it just got weirder as we went higher up.”

The Icefin robot’s unprecedented look inside a crevasse, and observations revealing more than a century of geological processes beneath the ice shelf, are detailed in “Crevasse Refreezing and Signatures of Retreat Observed at Kamb Ice Stream Grounding Zone,” published March 2 in Nature Geoscience.

The paper reports results from a 2019 field campaign to Kamb Ice Stream supported by Antarctica New Zealand and other New Zealand research agencies, led by Christina Hulbe, professor at the University of Otago, and colleagues. Through support from NASA’s Astrobiology Program, a research team led by Britney Schmidt, associate professor of astronomy and earth and atmospheric sciences at Cornell, was able to join the expedition and deploy Icefin. Schmidt’s Planetary Habitability and Technology Lab has been developing Icefin for nearly a decade, beginning at the Georgia Institute of Technology.

Combined with recently published investigations of the fast-changing Thwaites Glacier – explored the same season by a second Icefin vehicle – the research is expected to improve models of sea-level rise by providing the first high-resolution views of ice, ocean and sea floor interactions at contrasting glacier systems on the West Antarctic Ice Sheet.

Thwaites, which is exposed to warm ocean currents, is one of the continent’s most unstable glaciers. Kamb Ice Stream, where the ocean is very cold, has been stagnant since the late 1800s. Kamb currently offsets some of the ice loss from western Antarctica, but if it reactivates could increase the region’s contribution to sea-level rise by 12%.

“Antarctica is a complex system and it’s important to understand both ends of the spectrum – systems already undergoing rapid change as well as those quieter systems where future change poses a risk,” Schmidt said. “Observing Kamb and Thwaites together helps us learn more.”

NASA funded Icefin’s development and the Kamb exploration to extend ocean exploration beyond Earth. Marine ice like that found in the crevasse may be an analog for conditions on Jupiter’s icy moon Europa, the target of NASA’s Europa Clipper orbital mission slated for launch in 2024. Later lander missions might one day search directly for microbial life in the ice.

Icefin carries a full complement of oceanographic instruments on a modular frame more than 12 feet long and less than 10 inches in diameter. It was lowered on a tether through a borehole the New Zealand team drilled through the ice shelf with hot water.

During three dives spanning more than three miles near the grounding zone where Kamb transitions to the floating Ross shelf, Icefin mapped five crevasses – ascending one – and the sea floor, while recording water conditions including temperature, pressure and salinity.

The team observed diverse ice features that provide valuable information about water mixing and melt rates. They included golf ball-like dimples, ripples, vertical runnels and the “weirder” formations near the top of the crevasse: globs of ice and finger-like protrusions resembling brinicles (brine icicles).

Ice pumping observed in the crevasse likely contributes to the relative stability of the Ross Ice Shelf – the world’s largest by area, the size of France – compared to Thwaites Glacier, the researchers said.

“It’s a way these big ice shelves can protect and heal themselves,” said Peter Washam, a polar oceanographer on the Icefin science team and the paper’s second author. “A lot of the melting that happens deep near the grounding line, that water then refreezes and accretes onto the bottom of the ice as marine ice.”

On the sea floor, Icefin mapped parallel sets of ridges that the researchers believe are impressions left behind by ice shelf crevasses – and a record of 150 years of activity since the Kamb stream stagnated. As its grounding line retreated, the ice shelf thinned, causing the crevasses to lift away. The ice’s slow movement over time shifted the crevasses seaward of the ridges.

“We can look at those sea floor features and directly connect them to what we saw on the ice base,” said Lawrence, the paper’s lead author, now a program manager and planetary scientist at Honeybee Robotics. “We can, in a way, rewind the process.”

In addition to Lawrence, Washam and Schmidt, Cornell co-authors of the research are Senior Research Engineers Matthew Meister, who led the Icefin engineering team, and Andrew Mullen; Research Engineer Daniel Dichek; and Program Manager Enrica Quartini. Schmidt’s team also includes Research Engineer Frances Bryson, and at Georgia Tech, doctoral students Benjamin Hurwitz and Anthony Spears.

Also contributing were partners from New Zealand at the National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research (NIWA); University of Auckland; University of Otago; and Victoria University of Wellington.

NASA supported the research through the Planetary Science and Technology from Analog Research program’s Project RISE UP (Ross Ice Shelf and Europa Underwater Probe), and the Future Investigators in NASA Earth and Space Science and Technology program. Additional support came from New Zealand’s Antarctic Science Platform, the U.S. Antarctic Program and Victoria University of Wellington’s Hot Water Drilling initiative.

Summary sentence

The Icefin robot’s unprecedented look inside a crevasse, and observations revealing more than a century of geological processes beneath the ice shelf, are detailed in a new paper in Nature Geoscience.

Summary

Dateline

Fri, 03/03/2023 - 12:00

jess@cos.gatech.edu

Contact

Cornell University:
Writer: James A. Dean, Staff Writer, Cornell Chronicle
Media Contact: Jeff M. Tyson, Media Relations, Cornell University

Georgia Institute of Technology:
Jess Hunt-Ralston
Director of Communications
College of Sciences at Georgia Tech

Keywords

School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences

icefin

Britney Schmidt

Justin Lawrence

Benjamin Hurwitz

Anthony Spears

go-researchnews

cos-climate

cos-planetary

Ocean Science and Engineering (OSE)

News room topics

Earth and Environment

Core research areas

Robotics

Systems

Mercury ID

666418

Source updated

Fri, 03/03/2023 - 16:25

Vice President’s Visit Brings Climate Change Discussion to Forefront

admin — Thu, 09 Feb 2023 19:52:53 +0000

Vice President’s Visit Brings Climate Change Discussion to Forefront admin Thu, 02/09/2023 - 14:52

With the Ferst Center filled to the brim Wednesday, Georgia Tech hosted Vice President Kamala Harris for a discussion about the climate crisis, which she called a transformational moment in America.

Speaking on the “moment of great opportunity” in the face of the equally daunting challenge of the climate crisis, Harris participated in a moderated discussion at the Ferst Center for the Arts on the Georgia Tech campus Wednesday afternoon.

The vice president spoke to students, faculty, staff, and community members with the message of creating an equitable clean energy economy and how it will take a true team effort to achieve that goal.

“In order for us to truly achieve that, it’s going to require all to be involved … our scientists, our researchers, our academicians,” she said. “But it’s also going to be about our students. It’s going to be about our unions. It’s going to be about the private sector. It’s going to be about our teachers. It’s going to be about our youth leaders. It is going to take a whole community.”

Continuing Georgia Tech’s longstanding tradition of hosting elected officials, going back to 1905 with President Theodore Roosevelt, Harris was joined by Isaiah Bolden, assistant professor in the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, and James Marshall Shepherd, director of the Atmospheric Sciences Program at the University of Georgia. Each spoke of how their life experiences led them to their respective career paths.

Bolden’s passion for climate science was born out of tragedy as he saw his hometown of Nashville, Tennessee, flooded. Seeing the number of people and entire communities that were displaced, Bolden shared that his career choice became clear in that moment.

“I had this passion burgeoning right then and there as someone who has this aptitude for science, this aptitude for math, but then seeing that the science is not reaching the public in a way that it should,” he said. “What can I then do with my career as an environmental scientist to generate data and get that data into the hands of people who could do something with it?”

Perhaps the most visible sign of a movement toward the country’s recent commitment to climate change efforts is the increased number of electric vehicles on roadways. With Georgia positioning itself as a leader in that sector by attracting manufacturers such as Hyundai, Rivian, and Qcells to the state, Georgia Tech President Ángel Cabrera emphasized that the campus in the heart of Atlanta was the “perfect place” to host Wednesday’s discussion.

“As one of the nation’s leading research universities, Georgia Tech is committed to making sure that our $1.3 billion research enterprise, our unmatched faculty expertise, and our top students help in this process by producing new solutions and exceptional talent while driving economic opportunity through job creation,” he said.

In addition to community resilience policies that focus on removing lead pipes in cities across the country and other funding created through the Inflation Reduction Act and the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, Harris spoke passionately about the electrification of school buses.

Currently, 90% of the buses that carry 25 million children to school daily are diesel-fueled. Along with the public health and environmental impact of electrifying buses, Harris touted the prospect of creating new jobs and new manufacturing opportunities.

As the climate conversation continues, Shepherd emphasized that these are “kitchen table issues” that affect everyone. Harris reiterated that point, noting that the discussion serves as an intersection for environmental justice and equity in public health and education before closing with a message to the next generation of leaders.

“You are coming out and we’re talking about all kinds of creative, very exciting ways to do this that are going to be about public health, public education, strengthening our economy, investing in jobs, respecting the dignity of work, being a model for the world, and being a good shepherd of resources, both in terms of the responsibility that America has to Americans and that America has to its neighbors,” she said.

Joe Bozeman III, assistant professor in the School of Civil and Environmental Engineering whose work as an industrial ecologist highlights the need for equitable climate change adaptation and mitigation strategies, left the Ferst Center with a sense that the discussion around climate policy is moving into the forefront.

“Seeing the vice president speak so confidently and expansively about the issue of climate justice, equity, and the engineering side of things, I really found myself impressed,” Bozeman said. “I feel more confident about the administration’s intent behind some of the acts they’ve passed, and I’m enthused to continue to do the work as a researcher here at Georgia Tech.”

He also noted how the vice president’s visit serves as a reminder of Georgia Tech’s important role in the community and how the campus serves as a place for collaboration.

“The HBCU representation here, in particular, was exciting for me to see. And my hope is that we can continue to make some of the internal efforts connecting with our HBCUs and our other minority serving institutions and come up with the kind of innovative, inclusive solutions that may have eluded us 10 or 20 years before,” he said.

Summary sentence

With the Ferst Center filled to the brim Wednesday, Georgia Tech hosted Vice President Kamala Harris for a discussion about the climate crisis, which she called a transformational moment in America.

Summary

<p>With the Ferst Center filled to the brim Wednesday, Georgia Tech hosted Vice President Kamala Harris for a discussion about the climate crisis, which she called a transformational moment in America.</p>

Dateline

Thu, 02/09/2023 - 12:00

Contact

Steven Gagliano

Communications Officer

Institute Communications

Past Presidential Visits to Georgia Tech

President Theodore Roosevelt
October 20, 1905

President-Elect William H. Taft
January 16, 1909

President Franklin D. Roosevelt
November 29, 1935

President Jimmy Carter
February 20 and August 30, 1979

President William J. Clinton
July 19, 1996

President George W. Bush
March 27, 2002

President Barack Obama
March 10, 2015

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School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences

Isaiah Bolden

climate

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Source updated

Thu, 02/09/2023 - 12:25

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