Extreme Weather and Climate2
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Park Williams Discovers History and Science in a Tree Ring
Park Williams studies trees and climate, in particular the causes of drought and the effects of climate change on forests. In this latest in a series of Earth Institute videos, we spoke to him about what he does, what’s important about it, and how his interest in history and environmental science blended into a career.
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Increasing Tornado Outbreaks: Is Climate Change Responsible?
In a paper published in the journal Science, researchers looked at increasing trends in the severity of tornado outbreaks, measured by the number of tornadoes per outbreak. They found that these trends are increasing fastest for the most extreme outbreaks.
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NYC’s Heat Waves: A Harbinger of Things to Come?
As global temperatures rise and heat records are broken, many wonder if New York City’s heat waves this summer were a result of climate change, and if we will experience more of them in the future.
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As Louisiana Floods, Measuring the Climate Change Effect
The heavy rains and flooding in Louisiana have been devastating. Can we attribute the severity of it to climate change? How you measure that depends on the questions you ask.
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Attributing Extreme Weather to Causes—Including Climate Change
New research and more powerful computer models are advancing scientists’ ability to tease apart the forces that can worsen extreme weather. In a new report, a committee of the National Academy of Sciences that includes Columbia’s Adam Sobel assesses the young field of attribution studies.
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Rapid-Fire Cyclones over the North Indian Ocean
With Chapala’s destructive landfall in Yemen just a couple of days in the past, a second tropical cyclone, Megh, has just formed in the Arabian Sea. This one is not forecast to become anywhere near as intense as Chapala did—though we know intensity forecasts can be wrong, as they were at early stages for both…
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Getting Sustainability on the Agenda of Our Dysfunctional Federal Government
What is needed politically and in reality is a positive vision of a sustainable society. In the case of this country it will need to be built on the traditional values that have always attracted people to America: freedom, rewarding individual achievement, a love of the new and novel, innovation, and acceptance (even if reluctantly)…
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Historic Hurricane Nears Landfall on Southwest Coast of Mexico
Hurricane Patricia, the strongest hurricane ever observed in either the Atlantic or eastern Pacific, is expected to make landfall on the Southwest coast of Mexico this afternoon and evening as an extremely dangerous Category 5 hurricane.
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Joaquin? There’s No Perfect Forecast, So Stay Tuned
What will Hurricane Joaquin do? The science of predicting that is getting better, but still uncertain. The debate today is over whether there will be a U.S. landfall now in five or more days’ time or not; 30 years ago there would have been no point in even having that discussion.
