Climate296
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Global Roundtable on Climate Change Will Bring Together International Stakeholders to Discuss Issues of Climate Change
Starting tomorrow and continuing on February 27, the Global Roundtable on Climate Change (GROCC), part of the Earth Institute at Columbia University, will host its sixth meeting. The Roundtable is made up of more than 150 corporate, government, and non-governmental member organizations who have met regularly since 2005 to discuss and explore areas of potential…
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Giving new meaning to the word “hybrid”
Last week, we learned that the Obama EPA will conclude that carbon dioxide is an air pollutant as defined by the Clean Air Act (CAA). But a so-called endangerment finding on CO2 won’t lead to comprehensive CAA regulation, as I argued a few posts ago. Rather, the Obama administration will use the CAA as a…
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La Niña Conditions to Continue?
According to Tony Barnston of the IRI, the La Niña conditions which began in December are likely to continue until mid-March. Click on the graph below for a better look at the probabilistic forecast. As mentioned in an earlier post, La Niña events are characterized by unusually cold sea surface temperatures (SST) in the central…
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Oil sands on Obama’s Canada agenda
President Obama visits Canada today, and climate change is expected to be on the agenda. In Canada, the big issue is the development of the Albertan oil sands, which promise greater energy independence from the Middle East (a longtime U.S. goal) but also greater emissions as a result of the energy-intensive process of extracting oil from…
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Watch out GHGs: the Clean Air Act is coming to get you!
It took two years and a new administration, but the EPA is finally going to formally consider regulating carbon dioxide under the Clean Air Act. In the 2007 case Massachusetts v. EPA, the Supreme Court held that the Clean Air Act (CAA) was capable of regulating CO2 and ordered the EPA to give good reasons…
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When will we see a sea level rise of three feet?
Recently, the Columbia Climate Center had the chance to participate in an event aiming to improve public awareness on climate change. On the weekend of the 6th and 7th of February, the CCC had a table in the Polar Fair in the International Polar Weekend at the American Museum of Natural History. It was a…
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Interdisciplinary Work: Big Challenge, But Not Impossible
Health professionals, epidemiologists, health management workers and health policymakers are increasingly concerned about the potential impact that climate variability and climate change could have on public health. However, many public health professionals are not yet aware of the ways in which climate information can help them manage the impacts of climate on their work. At…
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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…
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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…
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