State of the Planet

News from the Columbia Climate School

Climate216

  • Making Sense of Climate’s Impact on Food Security

    Making Sense of Climate’s Impact on Food Security

    From warmer temperatures to natural disasters such as flooding and drought, changing patterns of climate are having billion-dollar impacts on our food-growing systems. But scientists are struggling to find ways to measure and predict what may happen in the future—and to translate that into policies to help feed a bulging world population.

  • Extreme Weather Adds Up to Troubling Future

    Extreme Weather Adds Up to Troubling Future

    Extreme weather and climate-related events already have cost the United States billions of dollars. A recent symposium focused on what we know about the causes and how changing climate affects agriculture, water supplies, wildlife and our economy.

  • Decision Making Under Uncertainty at AAAS

    Decision Making Under Uncertainty at AAAS

    Researchers from the Center for Research on Environmental Decisions will participate in a poster session featuring the work of each center funded under the National Science Foundation’s “Decision Making Under Uncertainty” grant. Nada Petrovic and Lisa Zaval will present the poster “What’s in a frame when it comes to fossil fuels: Does health matter more…

  • Migration in Risk-Prone Areas

    Migration in Risk-Prone Areas

    Access to data that lets us analyze global migration patterns is critical to climate change adaptation planning, among other applications.

  • Klaus Lackner Takes Step Toward Workable Carbon Capture Technology

    Klaus Lackner Takes Step Toward Workable Carbon Capture Technology

    Klaus Lackner’s approach to slowing global warming is to scrub carbon dioxide from the air—literally.

  • Welcoming a New Instrument for ‘Probing’ the Polar Regions

    Welcoming a New Instrument for ‘Probing’ the Polar Regions

    In 2009 it was just a dream. But creative vision, sweat equity, good partnerships and funding can bring dreams to reality, and 2013 delivered. It was four years ago that a small team of Lamont scientists, polar geophysicist Robin Bell, engineer Nick Frearson and ocean climate physicist Chris Zappa, began discussions of an instrument that…

  • Rosario’s Farm: Rising Tides, Shrimp from the Forest

    Rosario’s Farm: Rising Tides, Shrimp from the Forest

    Rosario Costa-Cabral and her brothers harvest hundreds of fruits, oils and wood products from the stream-laced forest of the Amazon River delta. But the climate here is changing: Tides rise higher, and seasonal floods are growing worse.

  • Bogged Down in Alaska

    For thousands of years Arctic peat bogs have soaked up atmospheric carbon like a giant sponge. But as the poles warm, the arctic bogs will decay and expel billions of tons of carbon back into the air—or will they? A warmer climate might actually improve growing conditions in the bogs, allowing them to take up…

  • What Obama Can and Should Do About Climate Change

    What Obama Can and Should Do About Climate Change

    As President Obama embarks on his second term, many Americans are hoping that the extreme weather of 2012 will mark a sea change and finally goad him into making meaningful efforts to deal with climate change.

Composite banner with modern building at night and portrait of Dean Alexis Abramson that reads "Science for the Planet"

By studying thousands of buildings and analyzing their electricity use, Columbia Climate School Dean Alexis Abramson has been able to uncover ways to significantly cut energy consumption and emissions. Watch the Video: “Engineering a Cooler Future Through Smarter Buildings

  • Making Sense of Climate’s Impact on Food Security

    Making Sense of Climate’s Impact on Food Security

    From warmer temperatures to natural disasters such as flooding and drought, changing patterns of climate are having billion-dollar impacts on our food-growing systems. But scientists are struggling to find ways to measure and predict what may happen in the future—and to translate that into policies to help feed a bulging world population.

  • Extreme Weather Adds Up to Troubling Future

    Extreme Weather Adds Up to Troubling Future

    Extreme weather and climate-related events already have cost the United States billions of dollars. A recent symposium focused on what we know about the causes and how changing climate affects agriculture, water supplies, wildlife and our economy.

  • Decision Making Under Uncertainty at AAAS

    Decision Making Under Uncertainty at AAAS

    Researchers from the Center for Research on Environmental Decisions will participate in a poster session featuring the work of each center funded under the National Science Foundation’s “Decision Making Under Uncertainty” grant. Nada Petrovic and Lisa Zaval will present the poster “What’s in a frame when it comes to fossil fuels: Does health matter more…

  • Migration in Risk-Prone Areas

    Migration in Risk-Prone Areas

    Access to data that lets us analyze global migration patterns is critical to climate change adaptation planning, among other applications.

  • Klaus Lackner Takes Step Toward Workable Carbon Capture Technology

    Klaus Lackner Takes Step Toward Workable Carbon Capture Technology

    Klaus Lackner’s approach to slowing global warming is to scrub carbon dioxide from the air—literally.

  • Welcoming a New Instrument for ‘Probing’ the Polar Regions

    Welcoming a New Instrument for ‘Probing’ the Polar Regions

    In 2009 it was just a dream. But creative vision, sweat equity, good partnerships and funding can bring dreams to reality, and 2013 delivered. It was four years ago that a small team of Lamont scientists, polar geophysicist Robin Bell, engineer Nick Frearson and ocean climate physicist Chris Zappa, began discussions of an instrument that…

  • Rosario’s Farm: Rising Tides, Shrimp from the Forest

    Rosario’s Farm: Rising Tides, Shrimp from the Forest

    Rosario Costa-Cabral and her brothers harvest hundreds of fruits, oils and wood products from the stream-laced forest of the Amazon River delta. But the climate here is changing: Tides rise higher, and seasonal floods are growing worse.

  • Bogged Down in Alaska

    For thousands of years Arctic peat bogs have soaked up atmospheric carbon like a giant sponge. But as the poles warm, the arctic bogs will decay and expel billions of tons of carbon back into the air—or will they? A warmer climate might actually improve growing conditions in the bogs, allowing them to take up…

  • What Obama Can and Should Do About Climate Change

    What Obama Can and Should Do About Climate Change

    As President Obama embarks on his second term, many Americans are hoping that the extreme weather of 2012 will mark a sea change and finally goad him into making meaningful efforts to deal with climate change.