State of the Planet

News from the Columbia Climate School

Climate282

  • Arctic Sea Ice in a Warmer Climate

    Dr. Jennifer Kay, a post doc at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR), was  at Lamont recently to give a talk entitled “Mechanisms for Recent Sea Loss.” Kay’s talk offered a detailed explanation of recent sea loss in the Arctic, including the all-time low experienced in 2007. Kay also outlined mechanisms that may have…

  • Low-cost water management in Ethiopia

    Water capture and storage for irrigation has been an ongoing theme of research in Columbia’s earth and environmental engineering department, but Professor Upmanu Lall has recently taken things a step further. With funding from the Pulitzer family, Lall challenged a group of students in his senior engineering course to design a low-cost system of water…

  • McKinsey’s New GHG Abatement Curve

    McKinsey & Company has just released a new study outlining the potential costs of climate change mitigation. The report, which revises work originally published in 2007, evaluates 200 greenhouse gas abatement opportunities across 10 sectors and 21 world regions. It concludes that greenhouse gas emissions reductions of 35-40% below 1990 levels by 2030 are achievable…

  • Emissions standards to get Californicated

    Less than a week into his presidency, Barack Obama is poised to take his first step on the long road to averting climate catastrophe. The Times reports that Obama will allow California to raise automobile emissions standards for greenhouse gases above the national level. (OK, technically Obama has only ordered the EPA to review California’s…

  • Nearly All of Antarctica Is Warming

    New Study Shows Steady 50-Year Rise

  • Orange you glad we counted the carbon?

    There’s an article in today’s New York Times about PepsiCo’s effort to calculate the carbon footprint of its products, starting with Tropicana orange juice. A half-gallon of Tropicana represents the equivalent of 3.75 pounds of carbon dioxide emissions. This is roughly the same amount of carbon dioxide emitted by a 5-mile drive to the grocery…

  • Antarctic Scientists Inaugurate ‘Ocean Station Obama’

    Far From Washington, Gathering Climate Data Under New President

  • Lonnie Thompson’s 7,000 Meters of Ice

    I’ve been meaning to blog about Lonnie Thompson’s visit to Lamont last week; I suppose it’s the frigid temperatures here in New York that have kept melting tropical glaciers on my own back burner. For those who don’t know, Lonnie Thompson runs the Ice Core Paleoclimatology Research Group at the Ohio State’s Byrd Polar Research…

  • A Quick Guide to Obama’s Climate Picks, Part 1

    There’s been a lot of buzz lately (for example, here and here) about President-Elect Obama’s picks for key science and environment positions, many of who are advocates for a robust response to climate change. Who are these people and what will each of them be responsible for in the new administration? In part one of…

  • Arctic Sea Ice in a Warmer Climate

    Dr. Jennifer Kay, a post doc at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR), was  at Lamont recently to give a talk entitled “Mechanisms for Recent Sea Loss.” Kay’s talk offered a detailed explanation of recent sea loss in the Arctic, including the all-time low experienced in 2007. Kay also outlined mechanisms that may have…

  • Low-cost water management in Ethiopia

    Water capture and storage for irrigation has been an ongoing theme of research in Columbia’s earth and environmental engineering department, but Professor Upmanu Lall has recently taken things a step further. With funding from the Pulitzer family, Lall challenged a group of students in his senior engineering course to design a low-cost system of water…

  • McKinsey’s New GHG Abatement Curve

    McKinsey & Company has just released a new study outlining the potential costs of climate change mitigation. The report, which revises work originally published in 2007, evaluates 200 greenhouse gas abatement opportunities across 10 sectors and 21 world regions. It concludes that greenhouse gas emissions reductions of 35-40% below 1990 levels by 2030 are achievable…

  • Emissions standards to get Californicated

    Less than a week into his presidency, Barack Obama is poised to take his first step on the long road to averting climate catastrophe. The Times reports that Obama will allow California to raise automobile emissions standards for greenhouse gases above the national level. (OK, technically Obama has only ordered the EPA to review California’s…

  • Nearly All of Antarctica Is Warming

    New Study Shows Steady 50-Year Rise

  • Orange you glad we counted the carbon?

    There’s an article in today’s New York Times about PepsiCo’s effort to calculate the carbon footprint of its products, starting with Tropicana orange juice. A half-gallon of Tropicana represents the equivalent of 3.75 pounds of carbon dioxide emissions. This is roughly the same amount of carbon dioxide emitted by a 5-mile drive to the grocery…

  • Antarctic Scientists Inaugurate ‘Ocean Station Obama’

    Far From Washington, Gathering Climate Data Under New President

  • Lonnie Thompson’s 7,000 Meters of Ice

    I’ve been meaning to blog about Lonnie Thompson’s visit to Lamont last week; I suppose it’s the frigid temperatures here in New York that have kept melting tropical glaciers on my own back burner. For those who don’t know, Lonnie Thompson runs the Ice Core Paleoclimatology Research Group at the Ohio State’s Byrd Polar Research…

  • A Quick Guide to Obama’s Climate Picks, Part 1

    There’s been a lot of buzz lately (for example, here and here) about President-Elect Obama’s picks for key science and environment positions, many of who are advocates for a robust response to climate change. Who are these people and what will each of them be responsible for in the new administration? In part one of…