State of the Planet

News from the Columbia Climate School

Earth Sciences99

  • ‘Chasing Ice’: Watching History Unfold, and Disappear

    ‘Chasing Ice’: Watching History Unfold, and Disappear

    Near the end of “Chasing Ice,” a hunk of glacier the size of lower Manhattan explodes, rolls and crashes into the sea. If that sounds like a spoiler, well, go see the movie and you’ll know you would have known it was coming anyway. And the beauty of the movie is that it will still…

  • Greenland Welcomes Icepod and the 2013 Science Season

    Greenland Welcomes Icepod and the 2013 Science Season

    Icepod joined the first large wave of science teams headed to Greenland via the NYANG LC130 transport system. Four LC130 aircraft were packed to bursting with pallets of equipment, supplies and science teams anxious to get to their designated research locations.

  • Students Share Findings from Global Research

    This April over fifty students shared the results of their respective research projects with the rest of the Columbia community as part of the 2013 Student Research Showcase. While all within the field of sustainable development, research topics ranged from climate change to community development and included work from across the world.

  • Fossil Fuels Do Far More Harm Than Nuclear Power

    Fossil Fuels Do Far More Harm Than Nuclear Power

    Pushker Kharecha and James E. Hansen write about their recent paper on the long-term health effects of nuclear power versus fossil fuels, and argue that nuclear power needs to be part of the solution to climate change.

  • Careers in Earth Science

    Careers in Earth Science

    Last year, President Obama launched Educate to Innovate, a campaign designed to improve the participation and performance of the nation’s students in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM).

  • Plumbing the Deep Ocean Floor

    Plumbing the Deep Ocean Floor

    A video profile of the Lamont-Doherty Core Repository—the world’s largest collection of deep sea sediments, some as old as 100 million years. The 19,000 cores, largely collected by Lamont’s own research vessels, are a central resource for the global scientific community, which uses them for studies of earth’s past and current environment, especially in regard…

  • Greenhouse Gases Like Steroids for Extreme Weather

    Greenhouse Gases Like Steroids for Extreme Weather

    The fourth seminar in the Earth Institute’s Sustainable Development Seminar Series, “Ch Ch Ch Changes – recent trends in temperature extremes and hydroclimate,” brought together experts in the fields of climate change and hydrology to discuss emerging trends in global weather events.

  • Phosphorus: Essential to Life—Are We Running Out?

    Phosphorus: Essential to Life—Are We Running Out?

    Phosphorus is essential to human health and vital for food production. But are we using up phosphorus faster than we can economically extract it?

  • A Library of Giant Landslides

    A Library of Giant Landslides

    A new method for detecting big landslides is allowing scientists to understand the dynamics of these elusive events almost instantly, without traipsing to remote mountains or scrambling up rugged peaks months, or even years, later. In a recent study in the journal Science, Göran Ekström and Colin Stark, geophysicists at Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory,…

Columbia Climate School Giving Day on October 28, 2026, featuring students and renewable energy imagery

October 28, 2026 is Columbia Giving Day! Your gift to Columbia Climate School helps advance interdisciplinary research, educate the next generation of leaders, and transform bold ideas into real-world solutions for climate, Earth, and society.

  • ‘Chasing Ice’: Watching History Unfold, and Disappear

    ‘Chasing Ice’: Watching History Unfold, and Disappear

    Near the end of “Chasing Ice,” a hunk of glacier the size of lower Manhattan explodes, rolls and crashes into the sea. If that sounds like a spoiler, well, go see the movie and you’ll know you would have known it was coming anyway. And the beauty of the movie is that it will still…

  • Greenland Welcomes Icepod and the 2013 Science Season

    Greenland Welcomes Icepod and the 2013 Science Season

    Icepod joined the first large wave of science teams headed to Greenland via the NYANG LC130 transport system. Four LC130 aircraft were packed to bursting with pallets of equipment, supplies and science teams anxious to get to their designated research locations.

  • Students Share Findings from Global Research

    This April over fifty students shared the results of their respective research projects with the rest of the Columbia community as part of the 2013 Student Research Showcase. While all within the field of sustainable development, research topics ranged from climate change to community development and included work from across the world.

  • Fossil Fuels Do Far More Harm Than Nuclear Power

    Fossil Fuels Do Far More Harm Than Nuclear Power

    Pushker Kharecha and James E. Hansen write about their recent paper on the long-term health effects of nuclear power versus fossil fuels, and argue that nuclear power needs to be part of the solution to climate change.

  • Careers in Earth Science

    Careers in Earth Science

    Last year, President Obama launched Educate to Innovate, a campaign designed to improve the participation and performance of the nation’s students in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM).

  • Plumbing the Deep Ocean Floor

    Plumbing the Deep Ocean Floor

    A video profile of the Lamont-Doherty Core Repository—the world’s largest collection of deep sea sediments, some as old as 100 million years. The 19,000 cores, largely collected by Lamont’s own research vessels, are a central resource for the global scientific community, which uses them for studies of earth’s past and current environment, especially in regard…

  • Greenhouse Gases Like Steroids for Extreme Weather

    Greenhouse Gases Like Steroids for Extreme Weather

    The fourth seminar in the Earth Institute’s Sustainable Development Seminar Series, “Ch Ch Ch Changes – recent trends in temperature extremes and hydroclimate,” brought together experts in the fields of climate change and hydrology to discuss emerging trends in global weather events.

  • Phosphorus: Essential to Life—Are We Running Out?

    Phosphorus: Essential to Life—Are We Running Out?

    Phosphorus is essential to human health and vital for food production. But are we using up phosphorus faster than we can economically extract it?

  • A Library of Giant Landslides

    A Library of Giant Landslides

    A new method for detecting big landslides is allowing scientists to understand the dynamics of these elusive events almost instantly, without traipsing to remote mountains or scrambling up rugged peaks months, or even years, later. In a recent study in the journal Science, Göran Ekström and Colin Stark, geophysicists at Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory,…