Columbia Climate School's Office of Faculty Affairs is pleased to announce that our next Faculty Seminar will be by Dr. Stephen Cox, titled "Geochronology, how we figure out when it happened and how long it lasted in climate and hazard records" on Wednesday, October 16, from 2pm - 3:30 pm in the Forum Room 229. The talk abstract and the speaker’s bio are below. We'd appreciate you joining us for this event
If joining on Zoom, please RSVP here. If you cannot access this link, please email [email protected] to be added to the Zoom list.
Abstract: Geochronology is foundational to the earth sciences. Rock, ice, and sediment records preserve millions of years of physical and chemical evidence of how the earth responds to changes in the climate system and to hazards like earthquakes and volcanic eruptions. Using these records in a rigorous, quantitative way requires the development of time constraints--geochronology--on the scale required for the process under investigation. I will present two examples from my work, developing a geochronology of earthquakes on the San Andreas Fault and linking the geochronology of carbonate rocks to ice cores, to show two very different ways that we can improve the time resolution of records critical to human society through innovative applications of traditional geochemical techniques.
Bio: Stephen Cox is an isotope geochemist who measures noble gases to date rocks and minerals. His interests extend from deep time thermochronology in the western United States to the geology of winemaking. He has a PhD from Caltech and has been at Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory since 2017
