One was Goldschmidt Congress 2017 held in Paris, and the other was the 10th International Conference on Carbon Dioxide held in Interlaken (Switzerland).
1. Goldschmidt 2017
I had never been to Paris, and it was really nice and beautiful place.
Climate of Paris was a little more chilly than I expected, and I didn't bring enough autumn clothes (air temperature of Japan was more than 30°C at that time!).
I presented a poster reporting last-deglacial boron isotope records of planktonic foraminifera collected from marine sediments in western equatorial Pacific. That was a preliminary data, and I'm now preparing for obtaining new data.
It was a really good experience to attend at the "Boron Workshop" and meet many people who has a lot of interests in geochemisty of boron.
Also, it was really nice for me to have a discussion with Michael and Gavin.
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| Poster and me |
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| Notre Dame Church |
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| Louvre Art Museum's Pyramid |
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| Eiffel Tower |
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| Equation |
I was really surprised to see a name "Shukuro Manabe" on a wall of a platform at the North Paris Station (Gare de Nord). He is very famous climate modeler who studied climate systems and contributed to establish the initial concept of GCMs (atmosphere and ocean coupled general circulation model).
I think it is really good to make general public pay attention to climate sciences. It was in Paris that new Climate Agreement was adopted, and this was why Dr. Manabe's name was appeared in the station.
2. ICDC10
After I enjoyed visiting a lot of art museums in Paris, I moved to Interlaken by train.
Interlaken is a mountainous place made by repeat advance and retreat of massive glaciers.
Shapes of mountains was U-shaped in general, suggesting that it was eroded by glaciers, not rains.
Air was clean and a scenery of mountains, lakes, and rivers was amazing.
I really enjoyed a hiking and two excursions visiting Karst Cave and the edge of Eiger Glacier that is now retreating with a very fast rate.
Of course, the meeting itself was nice. And I finally I was able to say hello to and discuss with Barbel. I have learned a lot from her publication, thus she was a kind of supervisor that I have never met.
The most impressive thing was that all meals was offered in vegetarian style.
Everyone in the conference hall understand that meat and milk (cheese and butter etc) production lead to heavy usage of water and massive release of greenhouse gasses (CO2, CH4, etc), because we study that theme.
It is a really good thing to think again about each contribution to greenhouse gas emmisions. But, to tell the truth, I expected to eat a lot of Switzeland-made cheese.
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| Overview of Interlaken, from top of Harder Kulm |
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| Karst Cave |
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| From Jungfraujoch (Top of Europe) |
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| Eiger North Wall on the right |
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| Retreating glacier and newly formed glacial lake beneath. this region is surrounding by soft sediments (glacial moraines) that is easily eroded and collapsed. |
