Earthquakes can be devastating, as Haiti has shown. They can trigger tsunamis, like the one in Indonesia in 2004, and create enough ground shaking to topple buildings. Aftershocks can prevent people from returning to their homes for weeks, even months. The immediate response to a natural disaster is to search for those lost, treat the…
Africa is ripping apart along a 4,000 kilometer seam called the East Africa Rift, which stretches from the Red Sea to Mozambique. This huge continental tear started in the north about 25 million years ago and has been gradually unzipping to the south, with rifting in Malawi starting about 10 million years ago. Breaking up…
In December, nearly a dozen earthquakes of magnitude 5 or greater rattled the southeast African nation of Malawi, killing four, injuring hundreds, and making thousands homeless. The region had been calm for decades, so the earthquakes caught everyone by surprise. But aftershocks continue, and more quakes can be expected. Seismologists from Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth…
The 7.0 magnitude earthquake that struck southern Haiti on January 12 caused massive destruction to human life and infrastructure—as many as 3 million people have been affected. The Earth Institute’s Haiti Policy Advisor, Tatiana Wah, who was in the country at the time of the earthquake, works with the Haitian government to develop, analyze, implement…
I am a geophysicist at Columbia’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, and I study how different processes shape the bottom of oceans and rivers. One focus of my research is the continental shelves off Antarctica, especially in the Bellingshausen and Amundsen Sea, and the role of ice sheets in their formation. I made my first trip to…
Layers of sand tell of fluctuations in climate, sea level
The view from the Palmer is so blindingly white today that the eye cannot tell where the ice ends and the clouds begin. In this unusually icy Antarctic summer, it seems strange to contemplate melting ice. But glaciers, here and in Greenland, are melting faster than they are growing. We know that ice sheets have…
Gayle Leonard, in her blog Thirsty in Suburbia, posts about Jason Garland’s Twitter feed, which is set up to automatically update for all water use in his household, continually, dozens of times a day. It’s undeniable documentation, it’s shocking, and it would get old very, very fast.
Members of the MCI/Earth Institute Accra team were treated to upbeat premiere performances of the first “Millennium City” song, composed in honor of Accra’s recent designation as a Millennium City. The catchy tune was premiered by famed Ghanaian singer/songwriter Akosua Agyapong and her band during a festive evening jamboree in the historic Jamestown neighborhood of…