Office Hours in the Ocean
Georgia Tech professor SCUBAs deep into the Pacific blue year after year to study climate.
Kim Cobb is an associate professor who teaches Georgia Tech students about climate and energy
with the school’s Earth and Atmospheric Sciences program. Like most professors, Cobb is not just
a teacher; she’s still a student of the world, learning through her own field research on
climate change. In an increasingly competitive world, Cobb has taken a specific effort to make
herself and her work stand out in her field.
“The niche I’ve carved out in my field is going where no one else goes,” says Cobb on her
research projects. Her favorite sites are based “smack in the middle of the Pacific Ocean” on
the remote coral atolls of the island chain nation known as Kiribati.
How does one end up establishing research in the middle of nowhere in the midst of the planet’s
largest ocean? Cobb explains that she first ventured to the coral atolls in 1997 during a large
“El Niño” event that killed a lot of corals on the research site. The unique experience,
combined with the eye-opening beauty of the islands, led Cobb to continue making the difficult
journey back to the atolls over the next 15 years.
One of Cobb’s favorite activities over the course of her over decade-long research is the
interactions she has had and the relationships that she has built with the local populations on
her excursions.
“We work across all kinds of different sites,” explains Cobb, “where we have to interact with the local populations, and I’ve met with tribes of elders and explained my research.”
Cobb explains that the effort of involving the locals has been rewarding, describing their
contributions as beneficial to her research; giving it more value than if she had gone in and
attempted to work on projects in isolation.
The locals are not Cobb’s only teammates out in the field. Cobb runs a research lab at Georgia
Tech and has taken several undergraduates under her wing.
“I have a line out the door of Georgia Tech students and students from all over the world,” Cobb said on the popularity of her research lab.
If the students stick with her long enough, they too get to take the journey to Cobb’s tropical
paradise research station. Cobb revels in giving these students the same opportunity to fall in
love with research just like she did in 1997. Many of her students have never traveled outside
of the U.S. before.
“They get their first passport to join me on one of these expeditions and I kinda just sit back
and watch the magic happen. After a week or two of being in that environment, they don’t want to
leave. They want to come back as soon as possible and they’re beginning to think, ‘How can I
incorporate this kind of experience into my lifeplan?’ and it becomes something that they strive
for.”
About 8-10% of college students in the U.S. get to experience a study abroad program. At Georgia
Tech, it is 48%, a number that causes Cobb to sing praises for the Institute:
“From a Georgia Tech perspective, you will not find an institution that is more supportive of
getting students out there to see things for themselves,” Cobb says.
Cobb grew up with hopes of becoming a doctor. As she explains, things started to fall in a
different direction and one trip abroad completely changed how she envisioned her future plans.
Cobb advises students to take advantage of similar opportunities that are afforded by Georgia
Tech.
“I would say that knock on some doors and ask the right people, because there are a huge number
of opportunities out there for students who want experience abroad, research and otherwise.”
Students Help Build 100,000-Year Climate Record.
Climate models designed to predict how the Earth will respond to changing atmospheric chemistry rely on data from so-called fossil records to help them look into the future. But what exactly are fossil records?
Jessica Moerman and Hussein Sayani know because they’ve held them in their hands. Working with Georgia Tech professor Kim Cobb, Moerman and Sayani have helped translate slabs of cave stalagmite and fossil coral into a 100,000-year history of climate in the tropical Pacific – an area critical to world climate. The information they’ve produced from these ancient rocks gives scientists a better picture of how the Earth responded to past changes in atmospheric carbon dioxide – information critical to improving the accuracy of 21st century climate projections under rising atmospheric carbon dioxide levels.
“I find it absolutely fascinating that geological archives, like stalagmites, contain within their chemistry information about how climate changed over the past thousands of years,” said Moerman. “Collecting and working with samples that contain a record of the Earth’s climate thousands of years into the past has given me a deep appreciation for how long it has taken the world to become what it currently is.”
Continue reading: Tales of the Pacific
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