State of the Planet

News from the Columbia Climate School

Climate266

  • Jaunt to Nearby Island Becomes Four-Day Epic

    Going to Antarctica involves a whole lot of paperwork. Before I left, I filled out an extensive medical history, was tested for every disease imaginable, gave my pants size, shoe size, hat size, until I had only one form remaining. That was the waiver acknowledging that working in Antarctica is inherently dangerous and that by…

  • So Much Depends on Sea Ice

    Where we work and how we get there depends on the sea ice. The Oden is a powerful icebreaker but it is often faster and more fuel-efficient to go around heavy sea ice then to chop our way through. If the sea ice is several feet thick, we often choose to detour. We actually consult…

  • Urbanization, Deforestation, Reforestation

    2009 was noted as the first year that more people lived in urban spaces than in rural areas.  The hope that a majority urban population would slow the clearing of tropical forests — our most effective carbon sinks — seems, however, to have been misplaced. The idea was simple: if more people moved into forested…

  • Is Ocean Water Helping to Melt Glaciers?

    After crossing the Ross Sea, we’ve reached our first study area: the “Little America Trough.” The oceanographers on board want to find out if warmer water from the deep ocean is rising onto the continental shelf and reaching the ice, making it melt faster. They measure temperature and salinity as well as the water currents.…

  • Urbanization, Export Crops Drive Deforestation

    In Reversal, Land Is Cleared for Global Trade and Big Cities, Says Study

  • A Quiet Crackling Below the Ice

    As a child, I believed that I could hear the ocean in a seashell. Now when I think about the sounds of the sea, I imagine the roar of waves crashing on the beach. But from the vantage point of a ship with noisy engines, the water seems silent. In 1490, Leonardo da Vinci observed,…

  • India boosts climate data contribution to IPCC

    “A scientific network set up recently by India’s environment ministry will contribute formally to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the country’s prime minister has announced.

  • Ready to Sail

    Today we arrived at McMurdo, an American research station that hosts Antarctica’s largest community—about 1,000 people during austral summer. To get here, a US Air Force cargo plane picked us up in Christchurch, New Zealand, and landed us on the ice nearby. Today is a balmy summer day of 30°F, not much colder than the…

  • Melting Glaciers–Tracking Their Path

    I am a geophysicist at Columbia’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, and I study how different processes shape the bottom of oceans and rivers. One focus of my research is the continental shelves off Antarctica, especially in the Bellingshausen and Amundsen Sea, and the role of ice sheets in their formation. I made my first trip to…

  • Jaunt to Nearby Island Becomes Four-Day Epic

    Going to Antarctica involves a whole lot of paperwork. Before I left, I filled out an extensive medical history, was tested for every disease imaginable, gave my pants size, shoe size, hat size, until I had only one form remaining. That was the waiver acknowledging that working in Antarctica is inherently dangerous and that by…

  • So Much Depends on Sea Ice

    Where we work and how we get there depends on the sea ice. The Oden is a powerful icebreaker but it is often faster and more fuel-efficient to go around heavy sea ice then to chop our way through. If the sea ice is several feet thick, we often choose to detour. We actually consult…

  • Urbanization, Deforestation, Reforestation

    2009 was noted as the first year that more people lived in urban spaces than in rural areas.  The hope that a majority urban population would slow the clearing of tropical forests — our most effective carbon sinks — seems, however, to have been misplaced. The idea was simple: if more people moved into forested…

  • Is Ocean Water Helping to Melt Glaciers?

    After crossing the Ross Sea, we’ve reached our first study area: the “Little America Trough.” The oceanographers on board want to find out if warmer water from the deep ocean is rising onto the continental shelf and reaching the ice, making it melt faster. They measure temperature and salinity as well as the water currents.…

  • Urbanization, Export Crops Drive Deforestation

    In Reversal, Land Is Cleared for Global Trade and Big Cities, Says Study

  • A Quiet Crackling Below the Ice

    As a child, I believed that I could hear the ocean in a seashell. Now when I think about the sounds of the sea, I imagine the roar of waves crashing on the beach. But from the vantage point of a ship with noisy engines, the water seems silent. In 1490, Leonardo da Vinci observed,…

  • India boosts climate data contribution to IPCC

    “A scientific network set up recently by India’s environment ministry will contribute formally to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the country’s prime minister has announced.

  • Ready to Sail

    Today we arrived at McMurdo, an American research station that hosts Antarctica’s largest community—about 1,000 people during austral summer. To get here, a US Air Force cargo plane picked us up in Christchurch, New Zealand, and landed us on the ice nearby. Today is a balmy summer day of 30°F, not much colder than the…

  • Melting Glaciers–Tracking Their Path

    I am a geophysicist at Columbia’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, and I study how different processes shape the bottom of oceans and rivers. One focus of my research is the continental shelves off Antarctica, especially in the Bellingshausen and Amundsen Sea, and the role of ice sheets in their formation. I made my first trip to…