Climate242
-
Climate Underpinnings of East Africa Drought
Watch a video interview of climate scientist Brad Lyon on the conditions leading up to the ongoing drought in East Africa. He says there’s a chance of La Niña forming later in the year, which could have devastating consequences for a region already plagued by widespread famine.
-
End of the Line – Good Byes to a Great Field Season in Peru
After more than six weeks trawling the Peruvian Andes in search of palaeoclimate clues, our field team is visiting the last site, a potential calibration sites near Coropuna. The objective of that ongoing work is to refine the cosmogenic surface-exposure method for the tropics, thereby improving the precision of new and existing datasets.
-
Climate News Round Up: Week of 8/1
Obstacles to Capturing Carbon Gas, NYTimes, July 31 Carbon capture and sequestration is a technology that traps carbon dioxide and stores it, usually underground in a geological formation. The process, already used by oil and natural gas companies, presents the opportunity for capturing CO2 from power plants and other sources of carbon emissions as a…
-
Have We Crossed the 9 Planetary Boundaries?
“The world needs to awaken itself to the looming catastrophe of global warming,” said Jeffrey Sachs, Director of the Earth Institute, at a recent meeting in Muscat. “We must provide a safe operating space where vested interest and lobby-driven policies will not see the world marching into disaster.”
-
The Abatement Gap
Results of a recent modeling exercise by the Columbia Climate Center in a collaborative project with Deutsche Bank Climate Change Advisors indicate that the combined impact of more than 350 energy and emissions policies in place across the world fails to reach, by 2020, an emission trajectory consistent with stabilizing atmospheric levels of CO2 at…
-
The Less Thirsty Cars of the Future
Good news for clean air and water: President Obama unveiled an agreement last week to raise the bar on fuel economy by 2025.
-
The Role of Drought in the Horn of Africa Famine
Let’s get this out of the way. The current famine in the Horn of Africa isn’t caused by drought. Rather, a complex mix of societal and political factors created a dangerous situation. The worst drought in 60 years (pdf) is what pushed that situation over the edge into a humanitarian crisis. However, just as these…
-
New Gift to Support the Launch of the Carbon Management Program
Following an initial gift last year to create a Masters Degree in Carbon Management, a generous Columbia University alumnus has renewed his support with additional funding toward the preparation and implementation of the program.
-
On the Subject of Dust
Our field team has set camp at 5045 m on the dusty slopes of Ampato, an extinct, ice-clad volcano in the Western Cordillera. This is the very mountain from which Juanita, the famous Incan ‘ice maiden’, was plucked back in 1995. The tents are clustered in the lee of a large glacial erratic and, now…
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“
