Climate262
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Losing your glaciers? Build your own.
Scientific American has an interesting photo piece by Gaia Vince about a place in the Himalayas that is adapting to climate change by creating its own glaciers.
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An Active Hurricane Season Predicted
The IRI’s latest forecast for the Atlantic hurricane season, which started June 1, points to significantly increased hurricane activity this year. In fact, the likelihood of having an above-normal year is more than three times that of having a below-normal year. This could spell trouble for highly vulnerable Caribbean nations such as Haiti – still…
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High Elevation Lakes
We are currently taking samples of water and sediments from high-elevation lakes near the glaciers. Like ice cores from the glaciers themselves, these should contain substances that will help us understand the climate history of this region. The sampling is being done in conjunction with the Indonesian Institute of Sciences and the Indonesian Meteorological, Climatological…
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Needed: Ice Drills
We are staying at the high-elevation Grasberg gold and copper mine—not on top of Puncak Jaya—because some of our equipment has not arrived. We have 99 pieces out of the 106 we shipped, but unfortunately our ice drills are in the missing pieces, and we cannot do anything without those. We are working hard to…
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Scouting the Glacier
Team members are now actively scouting by foot on Puncak Jaya, looking for the best drill spots, travel routes and campsites. The man in red is Broxton Bird of Ohio State University. In brown, the appropriately named alpine veteran Keith Mountain of the University of Louisville. At bottom: team leaders Dwi Susanto and Lonnie Thompson give a…
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Climate and Public-Health Communities Train Together
For the third year in a row, public-health professionals and climate scientists from around the world are visiting Columbia University’s Lamont campus, where the International Research Institute for Climate and Society is based, to learn how to use climate information to make better decisions for health-care planning and disease prevention. They’re taking part in the…
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20th Century One of Driest for Northwest Africa in 900 Years
Ancient Trees Give Context to Recent Droughts
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Predicting Rainfall in Senegal and the Sahel
Last week Ousmane Ndiaye, a graduate student at DEES and a graduate research assistant at the IRI, gave his thesis defense to a packed house in Monell. The presentation, entitled “Predictability of the Sahel Climate: Seasonal Sahel Rainfall and Onset over Senegal,” considered issues of rainy-season predictability in Ndiaye’s home country. It also earned him…
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Moving Up a Melting Mountain
Four days ago, we flew into the lowland Papuan city of Timika, then moved up to Tembagapura, a town managed by the Freeport-McMoRan company, whose gold/copper mine near our glaciers is lending us logistical support. Tembagapura, at 1,900 meters (6,000 feet), was our first step in acclimatizing to high elevation. Now we have moved up…