Initiative on Extreme Weather and Climate
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Giant Boulders on Bahamas Coast Are Evidence of Ancient Storms and Sea Level, Says Study
A new study says that storms of intensities seen today, combined with a few meters increase in sea level, were enough to transport coastal boulders weighing hundreds of tons more than 100,000 year ago.
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Mumbai May Be Vulnerable to Future Hurricanes
If a serious cyclone were to strike Mumbai, the results could be catastrophic, says a study underway at Columbia.
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What’s in the Forecast and How Do We Know?
The Earth Institute’s International Research Institute for Climate and Society makes probabilistic forecasts for rainfall and temperature for the next six months. How does it do this?
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Adam Sobel: Preparing for the Next Big Storm
Superstorm Sandy was a wake-up call for a lot of people in New York City, including Adam Sobel, who’s spent more than two decades studying the physics of weather and climate.
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Richard Seager Sees Hand of Climate Change in Drought
California’s wet and snowy winter brings welcome relief from a years-long drought that has challenged the state’s water supply and agricultural system. But climate scientist Richard Seager of Lamont Doherty Earth Observatory offers words of caution: Remember what happened, because it will happen again.
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Michelle Ho: In a Land of Plenty, Big Water Problems
Michelle Ho grew up in Australia, the driest inhabited continent, with an appreciation for the value of having a clean glass of water to drink. Now, she conducts research for the Columbia Water Center on America’s water systems.
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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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Forecasting for the In-Between
We can do a good job forecasting the weather for a week or two, and we can settle on what the climate is likely to do season to season, a month to a year into the future. But what about in-between?
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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.
