State of the Planet

News from the Columbia Climate School

Water69

  • The Dead Sea Dilemma – Part I

    There is one thing that people do agree on in the Middle East – the Dead Sea needs help. Its surface level is dropping by an average of three feet a year and the shoreline has retreated more than a mile in some locations. Over the past 50 years, the surface area of the Sea…

  • How much and how fast: Seminar on changing sea levels

    Professor Benjamin Horton shared his research on how quickly sea levels have increased over time, an important part of putting together the climate change puzzle.

  • From snow to rain? Not so much.

    In a seminar March 4th, Dr. Venkat Lakshmi presented his study showing that snowcover doesn’t directly influence the amount of precipitation during the rainy season, in the Southern Rocky Mountain Region.

  • Simplify, Simplify: CWC Seminar on predicting the affects of climate change

    Columbia Water Center Seminar Series: Murugesu Sivapalan says, “Simplify, simplify” and offers a ‘back-of-the-envelope’ method of predicting the affects of climate change on water basins.

  • Urban Design Lab: Plastic TrashPatch

    How much is your trash worth?  Using various visualization instruments, design ideas, engineering, and environmental science research, a team of designers, engineers, and scientists at the Urban Design Lab (UDL) are trying to find out. A new initiative for 2010, Plastic TrashPatch, seeks to raise awareness of ”trashpatches,” thick areas of concentrated marine debris that…

  • Agriculture: Big Water Use, Big Water Savings

    As in much of the world, farmers in Punjab, an agricultural state known as the “breadbasket of India,” grow rice via flood irrigation.  In this method, fields are flooded with several centimeters of water in order to kill weeds.  When the water dries, the field is flooded again – up to 40 times per season.  Clearly this uses a…

  • What did you say? Saying what you mean.

    How we talk about the CWC’s work and about the complex issues we’re working with is very important, but it is often hard to give up specificity in favor of understandability. We can all use reminders about how to communicate clearly and effectively with the general public.

  • A Truce in the California Water Wars

    Nationally, the California Water Wars have been something people have been following for months.  As discussed by Water Center expert Tanya Heikkila in her September blog post “California’s other crisis,”  the state’s reservoirs had been significantly depleted and fights had been breaking out all over the state about who deserved water the most – farmers,…

  • USGS report shows water use in the USA increasingly efficient

    The US Geological Survey report, ‘Estimated Use of Water in the United States in 2005’, By Joan F. Kenny, et al, released in 2009, compares recent and historical findings on water withdrawls for fresh surface water, groundwater, irrigation, thermo-electric power generation, public supply, self-supplied industrial use, and livestock, among others.

Photo of the Earth from space with the text "Lamont at AGU25" on top.

AGU25, the premier Earth and space science conference, takes place December 15-19, 2025 in New Orleans, Louisiana. This year’s theme—Where Science Connects Us—puts in focus how science depends on connection, from the lab to the field to the ballot box. Once again, Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory and Columbia Climate School scientists, experts, students, and educators are playing an active role, sharing our research and helping shape the future of our planet. #AGU25 Learn More

  • The Dead Sea Dilemma – Part I

    There is one thing that people do agree on in the Middle East – the Dead Sea needs help. Its surface level is dropping by an average of three feet a year and the shoreline has retreated more than a mile in some locations. Over the past 50 years, the surface area of the Sea…

  • How much and how fast: Seminar on changing sea levels

    Professor Benjamin Horton shared his research on how quickly sea levels have increased over time, an important part of putting together the climate change puzzle.

  • From snow to rain? Not so much.

    In a seminar March 4th, Dr. Venkat Lakshmi presented his study showing that snowcover doesn’t directly influence the amount of precipitation during the rainy season, in the Southern Rocky Mountain Region.

  • Simplify, Simplify: CWC Seminar on predicting the affects of climate change

    Columbia Water Center Seminar Series: Murugesu Sivapalan says, “Simplify, simplify” and offers a ‘back-of-the-envelope’ method of predicting the affects of climate change on water basins.

  • Urban Design Lab: Plastic TrashPatch

    How much is your trash worth?  Using various visualization instruments, design ideas, engineering, and environmental science research, a team of designers, engineers, and scientists at the Urban Design Lab (UDL) are trying to find out. A new initiative for 2010, Plastic TrashPatch, seeks to raise awareness of ”trashpatches,” thick areas of concentrated marine debris that…

  • Agriculture: Big Water Use, Big Water Savings

    As in much of the world, farmers in Punjab, an agricultural state known as the “breadbasket of India,” grow rice via flood irrigation.  In this method, fields are flooded with several centimeters of water in order to kill weeds.  When the water dries, the field is flooded again – up to 40 times per season.  Clearly this uses a…

  • What did you say? Saying what you mean.

    How we talk about the CWC’s work and about the complex issues we’re working with is very important, but it is often hard to give up specificity in favor of understandability. We can all use reminders about how to communicate clearly and effectively with the general public.

  • A Truce in the California Water Wars

    Nationally, the California Water Wars have been something people have been following for months.  As discussed by Water Center expert Tanya Heikkila in her September blog post “California’s other crisis,”  the state’s reservoirs had been significantly depleted and fights had been breaking out all over the state about who deserved water the most – farmers,…

  • USGS report shows water use in the USA increasingly efficient

    The US Geological Survey report, ‘Estimated Use of Water in the United States in 2005’, By Joan F. Kenny, et al, released in 2009, compares recent and historical findings on water withdrawls for fresh surface water, groundwater, irrigation, thermo-electric power generation, public supply, self-supplied industrial use, and livestock, among others.