Highlights from Monday 14 December at #AGU20

The first day of the last week of #AGU20 continued with full programming, two innovative sessions, two plenaries and some great events – all available on demand through 15 February for attendees. In all, the recorded presentations and sessions amount to about 90 full days of video content, so browse at 2x speed to see all of it! Some highlights:

• Award-winning author Andrea Wulf enlightened us to the tremendous accomplishments and continued relevance of Alexander von Humboldt, the German naturalist and explorer, and highlighted the interconnections between science, art and society including his appreciation of and respect for indigenous knowledges.
• A panel of five university leaders discussed the challenges and opportunities they are facing during the COVID-19 pandemic, including the effects on and challenges for communities from local to global, students at all levels, faculty, and staff, and how this may be an opportunity for a singular change in academia.
• Did you miss the Named Lectures last week? You can still catch them on demand!
• Outstanding Student Presentation Award Winners from Fall Meeting 2019 presented in an eLightning session. The last session with last year’s winners is happening on Tuesday.
• An innovative session looked at convergence, collaboration, justice and the future of the sciences.
• Town Halls featured NASA’s Planetary Science Division, a roundtable about open science with the National Academies and a working session on FAIR data.
• A session took the conversation between scientists and educators around DEI to the “next level,” for those already involved in DEI work, or not.
• Some sessions you might have missed:
  • A157 – Bridging the Gap from Climate to Extreme Weather: Observations, Theory, and Modeling I
  • ED038 – Inclusivity in Geosciences: A Conversation Between Scientists and Educators I
  • NH030 – The Landslide Life Cycle: From Hazard Analysis to Risk Assessments III Posters and NH029 – The Landslide Life Cycle: From Hazard Analysis to Risk Assessments I
  • T040 – Spatial and Temporal Heterogeneities on Faults: Does Complexity Reveal Earthquake Processes? III Posters
  • SY047 – Transforming Earth and Planetary Science Data Visualization: Innovative Techniques, Novel Technologies, and Awesome Applications eLightning
  • G013 – Linking Cryosphere and the Solid Earth: From Sea Level Changes and Geodetic Time Series to Earth Rheology I
  • SH035 – First Data from the Solar Orbiter Mission I
  • SA021 – Magnetosphere–Ionosphere–Thermosphere Coupling During Storms and Substorms III Posters
  • C052 – Sub–Ice Sheet and Sub–Ice Shelf Environments: Bridging the Gap Between Modern Observations and Geologic Records I eLightning
  • IN031 – Advancing Tools and Services for Climate Models and Analytics III Posters

Here are some posters that you will want to add to your schedule:

• https://twitter.com/lena_capece/status/1338545105242783744
• https://twitter.com/wayana_dolan/status/1338541247779254272
• https://twitter.com/jon_diab/status/1338538729149906945
• https://twitter.com/WomenInSoilEco/status/1338538421317476355
• https://twitter.com/emsaurios/status/1338535911487905792
• https://twitter.com/SwampManElliott/status/1338533300701442048

Recent news from #AGU20:

• An Ice Core from the Roof of the World. Eos, 14 December. An innovative National Geographic expedition collected the world’s highest ice core from Mount Everest.
• Saving Lives by Predicting Dust Storms. Eos, 14 December In the southwestern United States, dust storms form suddenly, quickly reducing visibility to zero. A new warning system may allow motorists to avoid these deadly hazards.
• Do Uranus’s Moons Have Subsurface Oceans? Eos, 14 December. Scientists tested whether a classic technique could detect subsurface oceans on the moons of Uranus. In this scenario, the planet’s oddball magnetic field offers a big advantage.
• A Robust Proxy for Geomagnetic Reversal Rates in Deep Time. Eos, 14 December. The strength of Earth’s magnetic field in the distant past can tell scientists whether the planet’s magnetic poles were steady or prone to frequent reversals.
• Tracing the Moisture That Nourishes the World’s Highest Glacier. Eos, 14 December. Using data from weather stations on and around Mount Everest, scientists find that the Khumbu Glacier receives most of its moisture from the Bay of Bengal.
• Australia’s severe 2019-20 wildfires acted like a volcanic eruption, slightly cooling the globe. The Washington Post, 12 December. Australia’s disastrous 2019-2020 fire season blew so much smoke into the upper atmosphere that it blocked sunlight from reaching Earth’s surface, potentially causing a brief global cooling effect comparable to a moderate volcanic eruption, new research has found.
• What’s behind the mysterious, earth-shaking boom of the ‘Seneca Guns’? Live Science, 14 December. Enigmatic booming sounds called the “Seneca Guns” have reverberated off parts of coastal North Carolina for more than 150 years, with some powerful enough to rattle windows and vibrate buildings. Now, scientists are using seismic data to pinpoint where the explosions come from and what causes them.

Have you been reading the student/early career introductions this week? If you missed even one, catch it on Twitter #AGU20RollCall.

We’re also still enjoying the #AGU20 thread, “Tell us you’re an Earth and space scientist without telling us you’re an Earth and space scientist.”

Note: not all recordings of live sessions may be available at the time of this post, but they will be available in the coming days. Please check the online platform for updates.