Earth Sciences108
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A Rare Treat – The Green Flash
Sunday night after successfully recovering a gravity core about 42 miles north of the equator, conditions were right for a rare treat – the green flash.
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Journalism Student Completes Thesis on Texas Drought and Wildfire
by Kaci Fowler “Environmental politics is a part of who I am,” said Robert Eshelman, an aspiring journalist in Columbia’s Graduate School of Journalism. Robert used an Earth Institute travel grant to learn and write about sustainability in his senior thesis. “I am telling stories that will have a true impact on the environment.” Robert…
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Ice cores…finally
Today I got another chance to go out with team CASIMBO to drill ice-cores. The weather was beautiful with no wind, a few clouds, bright sunshine and a balmy temperature of about 5 degrees F. When I first saw sea ice near Alert a few years ago, I was very surprised. It wasn’t anything like…
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Students. Saturday. Science?
It’s a Saturday morning, and most kids between the ages of 12 and 14 are sleeping in, off to rehearsals or sports team practice, or grudgingly helping with household chores. At Columbia University, a group of middle-school students are eagerly engaging in the scientific method.
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Drilling Ancient Mud from Seafloor No Easy Task
Yesterday we left our first study region with new samples from the seafloor and a healthy respect for the ocean currents that can erode sediment deep in the ocean. The seafloor we surveyed was heavily eroded and we had to look carefully before finding sites that were promising enough to try sampling. Even then we…
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Our Best Flight Yet
Evidence of the retreat of glaciers since the last glacial maximum (check), flying over sites of ancient Inuit, Norse and present day settlements (check), and a personal recollection of my own past in this location (check).
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Ice-Coring…Almost
The weather started to get increasingly worse yesterday, with a lot of clouds, low visibility and snow. That, of course, means that we couldn’t go out flying for two days. The forecast for the next 24 hours doesn’t look promising either. But as usual in the Arctic it’s better not to forecast — everything might…
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Sampling Water at the North Pole
The 2012 field season started out better than we could hope for. The weather has been great for flying out onto the ice and sampling water from the Arctic ocean. We were able to get water samples from three stations, including one at the North Pole.
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An Interactive Map of Scientific Fieldwork
Earth Institute scientists explore how the physical world works on every continent — over and under the arctic ice, in the grasslands of Mongolia, on volcanoes in Patagonia, over subduction zones in Papua New Guinea, and on the streets of New York City.
Congratulations to our Columbia Climate School Class of 2026 and all of our 2026 Columbia University graduates! Learn more about our May 15 Climate School Class Day celebration. 💙 #Columbia2026 #ColumbiaClimate2026
