Initiative on Extreme Weather and Climate2
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Lessons of Climate Resilience in New York City
The Earth Institute hosted a panel focused on how New York City, and other cities like it, can take steps to become stronger and more resilient in the face of climate change.
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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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An Admiral Assesses Climate Change
Columbia University’s Initiative on Extreme Weather and Climate hosted its biggest seminar to date. David Titley presented a talk entitled Climate Risk and National Security: People not Polar Bears. Titley, a retired U.S. rear admiral and now a professor of meteorology at Pennsylvania State University, brought humor to a serious topic and how it affects…
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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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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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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.
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Tropical Rainfall from Hours to Millennia
Most of Earth’s rainfall occurs in a tropical zonal band that circles the Earth. Understanding how this band will responds to climate change requires us to combine time scales from hours to millennia.
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Bringing Together Storm Tracks and Clouds
The storm tracks define the weather and climate in mid-latitudes. A recent workshop in Switzerland highlighted the important role that clouds play for the response of the storm tracks to climate change.
