State of the Planet

News from the Columbia Climate School

Author: Kim Martineau5


  • What We Learned From Hurricane Sandy

    What We Learned From Hurricane Sandy

    Earth Institute experts weigh in as the one-year anniversary of Hurricane Sandy approaches.

  • Tackling an Ice Age Mystery

    Tackling an Ice Age Mystery

    In a new study in Nature, climate scientist Maureen Raymo and her colleagues show that variations in sunlight interact with Earth’s topography and the size of ice sheets to control Earth’s ice ages on 100,000 year cycles. One important finding: as ice sheets grow bigger, they also become more vulnerable to melting.

  • Climate in the Peruvian Andes:  From Early Humans to Modern Challenges

    Climate in the Peruvian Andes: From Early Humans to Modern Challenges

    Twice humans have witnessed the wasting of snow and ice from Peru’s tallest volcano, Nevado Coropuna—In the waning of the last ice age, some 12,000 years ago, and today, as industrial carbon dioxide in the air raises temperatures again. As in the past, Coropuna’s retreating glaciers figure prominently in the lives of people below. In…

  • Lamont Scientist Featured in Antarctic Climate Change Documentary

    Lamont Scientist Featured in Antarctic Climate Change Documentary

    Lamont-Doherty scientist Hugh Ducklow is featured in a documentary due out next summer on climate change and the West Antarctic Peninsula. Catch a preview in this newly-released trailer.

  • Contest Aims to Bring ‘Dark Data’ into Digital Archives

    Contest Aims to Bring ‘Dark Data’ into Digital Archives

    The scientific publisher Elsevier and a data archiving facility at Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory are offering $5,000 and a trophy to the person with the best example of how data-preservation techniques are being used to advance new discoveries in the earth sciences.

  • Plumbing the Deep Ocean Floor

    Plumbing the Deep Ocean Floor

    A video profile of the Lamont-Doherty Core Repository—the world’s largest collection of deep sea sediments, some as old as 100 million years. The 19,000 cores, largely collected by Lamont’s own research vessels, are a central resource for the global scientific community, which uses them for studies of earth’s past and current environment, especially in regard…

  • A Library of Giant Landslides

    A Library of Giant Landslides

    A new method for detecting big landslides is allowing scientists to understand the dynamics of these elusive events almost instantly, without traipsing to remote mountains or scrambling up rugged peaks months, or even years, later. In a recent study in the journal Science, Göran Ekström and Colin Stark, geophysicists at Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory,…

  • What Dust May Have To Do With Earth’s Rapidly Warming Poles

    What Dust May Have To Do With Earth’s Rapidly Warming Poles

    As earth’s climate warms, scientists have tried to understand why the poles are heating up two to three times faster than the rest of the planet. Airborne dust, it turns out, may play a key role.

  • Smaller Colorado River Projected for Coming Decades, Study Says

    Smaller Colorado River Projected for Coming Decades, Study Says

    Some 40 million people depend on the Colorado River Basin for water but warmer weather from rising greenhouse gas levels and a growing population may signal water shortages ahead.

  • What We Learned From Hurricane Sandy

    What We Learned From Hurricane Sandy

    Earth Institute experts weigh in as the one-year anniversary of Hurricane Sandy approaches.

  • Tackling an Ice Age Mystery

    Tackling an Ice Age Mystery

    In a new study in Nature, climate scientist Maureen Raymo and her colleagues show that variations in sunlight interact with Earth’s topography and the size of ice sheets to control Earth’s ice ages on 100,000 year cycles. One important finding: as ice sheets grow bigger, they also become more vulnerable to melting.

  • Climate in the Peruvian Andes:  From Early Humans to Modern Challenges

    Climate in the Peruvian Andes: From Early Humans to Modern Challenges

    Twice humans have witnessed the wasting of snow and ice from Peru’s tallest volcano, Nevado Coropuna—In the waning of the last ice age, some 12,000 years ago, and today, as industrial carbon dioxide in the air raises temperatures again. As in the past, Coropuna’s retreating glaciers figure prominently in the lives of people below. In…

  • Lamont Scientist Featured in Antarctic Climate Change Documentary

    Lamont Scientist Featured in Antarctic Climate Change Documentary

    Lamont-Doherty scientist Hugh Ducklow is featured in a documentary due out next summer on climate change and the West Antarctic Peninsula. Catch a preview in this newly-released trailer.

  • Contest Aims to Bring ‘Dark Data’ into Digital Archives

    Contest Aims to Bring ‘Dark Data’ into Digital Archives

    The scientific publisher Elsevier and a data archiving facility at Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory are offering $5,000 and a trophy to the person with the best example of how data-preservation techniques are being used to advance new discoveries in the earth sciences.

  • Plumbing the Deep Ocean Floor

    Plumbing the Deep Ocean Floor

    A video profile of the Lamont-Doherty Core Repository—the world’s largest collection of deep sea sediments, some as old as 100 million years. The 19,000 cores, largely collected by Lamont’s own research vessels, are a central resource for the global scientific community, which uses them for studies of earth’s past and current environment, especially in regard…

  • A Library of Giant Landslides

    A Library of Giant Landslides

    A new method for detecting big landslides is allowing scientists to understand the dynamics of these elusive events almost instantly, without traipsing to remote mountains or scrambling up rugged peaks months, or even years, later. In a recent study in the journal Science, Göran Ekström and Colin Stark, geophysicists at Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory,…

  • What Dust May Have To Do With Earth’s Rapidly Warming Poles

    What Dust May Have To Do With Earth’s Rapidly Warming Poles

    As earth’s climate warms, scientists have tried to understand why the poles are heating up two to three times faster than the rest of the planet. Airborne dust, it turns out, may play a key role.

  • Smaller Colorado River Projected for Coming Decades, Study Says

    Smaller Colorado River Projected for Coming Decades, Study Says

    Some 40 million people depend on the Colorado River Basin for water but warmer weather from rising greenhouse gas levels and a growing population may signal water shortages ahead.