State of the Planet

News from the Columbia Climate School

water matters41

  • New York City Water Summit, April 9, 2010

    Two of the most important, though less visible, environmental issues will have their day on April 9th. Attendees at the first New York City Water Summit will spend the day exploring the issues of drinking water and waste water, from technical and policy perspectives.

  • Get real: water pixies won’t solve your problems

    A currently very vocal part of the population is calling for less government and lower taxes – they apparently think that pixies will come in the night and maintain the infrastructure which provides for their comfortable lives.

  • The Dead Sea Dilemma – Part I

    There is one thing that people do agree on in the Middle East – the Dead Sea needs help. Its surface level is dropping by an average of three feet a year and the shoreline has retreated more than a mile in some locations. Over the past 50 years, the surface area of the Sea…

  • How much and how fast: Seminar on changing sea levels

    Professor Benjamin Horton shared his research on how quickly sea levels have increased over time, an important part of putting together the climate change puzzle.

  • From snow to rain? Not so much.

    In a seminar March 4th, Dr. Venkat Lakshmi presented his study showing that snowcover doesn’t directly influence the amount of precipitation during the rainy season, in the Southern Rocky Mountain Region.

  • Simplify, Simplify: CWC Seminar on predicting the affects of climate change

    Columbia Water Center Seminar Series: Murugesu Sivapalan says, “Simplify, simplify” and offers a ‘back-of-the-envelope’ method of predicting the affects of climate change on water basins.

  • Agriculture: Big Water Use, Big Water Savings

    As in much of the world, farmers in Punjab, an agricultural state known as the “breadbasket of India,” grow rice via flood irrigation.  In this method, fields are flooded with several centimeters of water in order to kill weeds.  When the water dries, the field is flooded again – up to 40 times per season.  Clearly this uses a…

  • What did you say? Saying what you mean.

    How we talk about the CWC’s work and about the complex issues we’re working with is very important, but it is often hard to give up specificity in favor of understandability. We can all use reminders about how to communicate clearly and effectively with the general public.

  • A Truce in the California Water Wars

    Nationally, the California Water Wars have been something people have been following for months.  As discussed by Water Center expert Tanya Heikkila in her September blog post “California’s other crisis,”  the state’s reservoirs had been significantly depleted and fights had been breaking out all over the state about who deserved water the most – farmers,…

Banner: Climate Week NYC 2025, September 21-28, 2025
  • New York City Water Summit, April 9, 2010

    Two of the most important, though less visible, environmental issues will have their day on April 9th. Attendees at the first New York City Water Summit will spend the day exploring the issues of drinking water and waste water, from technical and policy perspectives.

  • Get real: water pixies won’t solve your problems

    A currently very vocal part of the population is calling for less government and lower taxes – they apparently think that pixies will come in the night and maintain the infrastructure which provides for their comfortable lives.

  • The Dead Sea Dilemma – Part I

    There is one thing that people do agree on in the Middle East – the Dead Sea needs help. Its surface level is dropping by an average of three feet a year and the shoreline has retreated more than a mile in some locations. Over the past 50 years, the surface area of the Sea…

  • How much and how fast: Seminar on changing sea levels

    Professor Benjamin Horton shared his research on how quickly sea levels have increased over time, an important part of putting together the climate change puzzle.

  • From snow to rain? Not so much.

    In a seminar March 4th, Dr. Venkat Lakshmi presented his study showing that snowcover doesn’t directly influence the amount of precipitation during the rainy season, in the Southern Rocky Mountain Region.

  • Simplify, Simplify: CWC Seminar on predicting the affects of climate change

    Columbia Water Center Seminar Series: Murugesu Sivapalan says, “Simplify, simplify” and offers a ‘back-of-the-envelope’ method of predicting the affects of climate change on water basins.

  • Agriculture: Big Water Use, Big Water Savings

    As in much of the world, farmers in Punjab, an agricultural state known as the “breadbasket of India,” grow rice via flood irrigation.  In this method, fields are flooded with several centimeters of water in order to kill weeds.  When the water dries, the field is flooded again – up to 40 times per season.  Clearly this uses a…

  • What did you say? Saying what you mean.

    How we talk about the CWC’s work and about the complex issues we’re working with is very important, but it is often hard to give up specificity in favor of understandability. We can all use reminders about how to communicate clearly and effectively with the general public.

  • A Truce in the California Water Wars

    Nationally, the California Water Wars have been something people have been following for months.  As discussed by Water Center expert Tanya Heikkila in her September blog post “California’s other crisis,”  the state’s reservoirs had been significantly depleted and fights had been breaking out all over the state about who deserved water the most – farmers,…