State of the Planet

News from the Columbia Climate School

American Geophysical Union10

  • Is New York City Ready for Drought?

    Is New York City Ready for Drought?

    All day long a flood of thousands scientists and students ebbs and flows across San Francisco’s 4th Street and Howard Avenue, coursing between the cavernous Moscone West and Moscone South convention buildings. The AGU is like a supercomputer of earth science, with human currents of data swapping information, heading from one talk to another, processing…

  • Honoring a Pioneer in Planetary Evolution

    Honoring a Pioneer in Planetary Evolution

    David Walker, a professor of geochemistry at Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, will be honored tonight by colleagues at the American Geophysical Union for decades of groundbreaking work to understand the early formation of the moon and Earth. Walker will receive the AGU’s Harry H. Hess Medal, awarded for “outstanding achievements in research of the constitution and evolution of Earth and…

  • India’s Water Is Running Out

    India’s Water Is Running Out

    India is running “the largest water-mining project in the world”–and it cannot be sustained much longer, Columbia Water Center researcher Shama Perveen told an audience on Monday. That is mainly because farmers, who depend heavily on irrigation water drawn from underground aquifers, are using far more water than rainfall can replenish. Perveen’s talk, “Quantifying the…

  • The Right Tools to Talk Climate

    At AGU, you need the right tools to understand what’s going on, and to get where you need to go. Columbia researchers have been looking for the right tools to navigate another complicated place: The gap between what climate science tells us, and how a lot of the public hears that information.

  • Deep Ocean Heat Is Melting Antarctic Ice

    Deep Ocean Heat Is Melting Antarctic Ice

    Like dirt swept under the carpet, it appears that much of the human-made heat produced over the last century has been getting soaked up by the world’s oceans, and sinking into deep waters.

  • 18,000 Scientists–In One Place

    This week marks the world’s largest annual gathering of earth and space scientists: the five-day December meeting of the American Geophysical Union. There will be about 18,000 of them, spread across two giant San Francisco convention halls giving talks and discussing the latest in their fields. Scores of researchers from the Earth Institute will be…

  • Abrupt Climate Shifts May Come Sooner, Not Later

    Rising Seas, Severe Drought, Could Come in Decades, Says U.S. Report

  • Earth Institute at the American Geophysical Union

    Earth Institute scientists are presenting scores of talks at the world’s largest gathering of earth scientists, the fall 2008 meeting of the American Geophysical Union. Subjects include unseen natural hazards, changing climate, and how mankind will deal with these challenges. Most researchers at AGU come from two of the Earth Institute’s largest centers: Lamont-Doherty Earth…

  • G. Michael Purdy Awarded 2006 Maurice Ewing Medal

    Honor by the American Geophysical Union recognizes more than 30-year commitment as a researcher, administrator and innovator in the earth sciences

  • Is New York City Ready for Drought?

    Is New York City Ready for Drought?

    All day long a flood of thousands scientists and students ebbs and flows across San Francisco’s 4th Street and Howard Avenue, coursing between the cavernous Moscone West and Moscone South convention buildings. The AGU is like a supercomputer of earth science, with human currents of data swapping information, heading from one talk to another, processing…

  • Honoring a Pioneer in Planetary Evolution

    Honoring a Pioneer in Planetary Evolution

    David Walker, a professor of geochemistry at Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, will be honored tonight by colleagues at the American Geophysical Union for decades of groundbreaking work to understand the early formation of the moon and Earth. Walker will receive the AGU’s Harry H. Hess Medal, awarded for “outstanding achievements in research of the constitution and evolution of Earth and…

  • India’s Water Is Running Out

    India’s Water Is Running Out

    India is running “the largest water-mining project in the world”–and it cannot be sustained much longer, Columbia Water Center researcher Shama Perveen told an audience on Monday. That is mainly because farmers, who depend heavily on irrigation water drawn from underground aquifers, are using far more water than rainfall can replenish. Perveen’s talk, “Quantifying the…

  • The Right Tools to Talk Climate

    At AGU, you need the right tools to understand what’s going on, and to get where you need to go. Columbia researchers have been looking for the right tools to navigate another complicated place: The gap between what climate science tells us, and how a lot of the public hears that information.

  • Deep Ocean Heat Is Melting Antarctic Ice

    Deep Ocean Heat Is Melting Antarctic Ice

    Like dirt swept under the carpet, it appears that much of the human-made heat produced over the last century has been getting soaked up by the world’s oceans, and sinking into deep waters.

  • 18,000 Scientists–In One Place

    This week marks the world’s largest annual gathering of earth and space scientists: the five-day December meeting of the American Geophysical Union. There will be about 18,000 of them, spread across two giant San Francisco convention halls giving talks and discussing the latest in their fields. Scores of researchers from the Earth Institute will be…

  • Abrupt Climate Shifts May Come Sooner, Not Later

    Rising Seas, Severe Drought, Could Come in Decades, Says U.S. Report

  • Earth Institute at the American Geophysical Union

    Earth Institute scientists are presenting scores of talks at the world’s largest gathering of earth scientists, the fall 2008 meeting of the American Geophysical Union. Subjects include unseen natural hazards, changing climate, and how mankind will deal with these challenges. Most researchers at AGU come from two of the Earth Institute’s largest centers: Lamont-Doherty Earth…

  • G. Michael Purdy Awarded 2006 Maurice Ewing Medal

    Honor by the American Geophysical Union recognizes more than 30-year commitment as a researcher, administrator and innovator in the earth sciences