Research News

The new Gary C. Comer Geochemistry Building at Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory in Palisades, N.Y., has won three top architecture awards. Recognized for its environment-friendly features, the building houses more than 80 staff, many of whom have long been at the forefront of global climate research. Scientists in Lamont's geochemistry division study the movements and interactions of substances in air, oceans, groundwater, biological remains, sediments and rocks.

Landslides kill thousands of people each year but because they're often triggered by earthquakes or heavy rains, the danger remains poorly understood. A PhD candidate at Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory has put together a global catalog of recent mudslides to help scientists better predict where and when the next one will occur.

Even on a sunny day, nearly 13 million gallons of water are pumped from New York City subways. As global warming brings rising sea levels and more frequent storms, more of New York’s transit system is expected to flood.

New Dating Technique Points to Differences Over 7,000 Years

The vast majority of the world’s glaciers are retreating as the planet gets warmer. But a few, including ones south of the equator, in South America and New Zealand, are inching forward. A new study in the journal Science puts this enigma in perspective.

Lamont Geologist Trevor Williams files a series of reports from aboard the ODP's drillship the "JOIDES Resolution" for Popular Mechanics Online.

April 3, 2009 - Ocean Drilling: How the Past Can Provide Clues to our Planet's Future Climate

April 9, 2009 - Up Close With Ocean Cores: JOIDES Scientists Put the Seabed Under the Microscope

April 17, 2009 - Ocean Drilling Tech: Exploring Seabed History With 600,000 Pounds of Pipe

A new book, Climate Change: the Science of Global Warming and Our Energy Future, serves as an excellent, long-needed primer on the workings of earth's climate.

Global Warming Could Worsen Newly Seen Pattern  

Researchers have developed the first year-by-year record of rainfall in sub-Saharan West Africa for the past 3,000 years, and identified a daunting pattern: a 30-to-60-year cycle of serious droughts that last a decade or more, punctuated by killer megadroughts that last for centuries.

Oceanographer Wins Prestigious Prize for Work Advancing Education

Kim Kastens, an oceanographer at Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, has been recognized for her research in making spatial concepts in earth science easier for students in a wide age range to understand. She will receive the American Geophysical Union’s Excellence in Geophysical Education Award at a ceremony in Toronto in May.

Four current and former researchers at Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory will receive honorary degrees from their alma mater, St. Lawrence University, this spring. The degrees will be awarded at May graduation to paleoclimatologist Peter deMenocal; engineer Dale Chayes; paleoceanographer Miriam Katz; and oceanographer Richard Fairbanks.

Iran seems to be moving toward an atomic bomb; North Korea reportedly could build a half dozen; and terrorist attacks have revived the specter of a faceoff between nuclear-armed Pakistan and India. Yet the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, forbidding  nuclear testing, has failed to win ratification from the U.S. Senate and lawmakers of some other nations. Opponents say scientists cannot reliably detect clandestine tests: Why should we go along, if others can cheat?

In 1968, 14-year-old Paul Olsen of suburban Livingston, N.J., and his friend Tony Lessa heard that dinosaur tracks had been found in a nearby quarry. They raced over on their bikes.  "I went ballistic," Olsen recalls. Over the next few years, the boys uncovered and studied thousands of tracks and other fossils there, often working into the night.  It opened the world of science to Olsen; he went on to become one of the nation’s leading paleontologists.

Warming Climate Drives Plankton and Penguins Poleward   

Adélie penguins are flocking closer to the South Pole. A new study in the leading journal Science explains why: they’re following the food supply, which is moving southward with changing climate.

Releases May Have Speeded End of Last Ice Age—And Could Act Again 

Natural releases of carbon dioxide from the Southern Ocean due to shifting wind patterns could have amplified global warming...

6,000 Square Miles in U.S. Might Turn Emissions to Harmless Solids 

To slow global warming, scientists are exploring ways to pull carbon dioxide from the air and safely lock it away.

JOIDES Resolution to Range from Bering Sea to Antarctic

After a major overhaul, one of the world’s two major scientific deep-sea drilling ships is back at sea.  Much of the coming year’s research aboard the JOIDES Resolution will focus on sudden climate shifts...

Aboard R/V  Gould, off Antarctica--Scientists aboard the U.S. research vessel Laurence M Gould, 10,000 miles from Washington off Antarctica, held their own presidential inaugural celebration on Jan. 20.

Climate Scientist Who Sounded Early Warnings Is Still At Work

Wallace S. Broecker, a geochemist at Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, has received the newly founded Frontiers of Knowledge Award in Climate Change Research, one of the world’s largest science prizes. An international jury awarded Broecker the $527,000 prize, from Spain’s Banco Bilbao Vizcaya Argentaria Foundation, for sounding early alarms about climate change, and for his pioneering work on how the oceans and atmosphere interact.

J. Lamar Worzel, a pioneering geophysicist and engineer who helped shape human understanding of how sound travels through the oceans and who cofounded Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, died Dec. 26. He was 89.

But Global Warming May Have Helped Override Some Recent Eruptions

Climate researchers have shown that big volcanic eruptions over the past 450 years have temporarily cooled weather in the tropics—but suggest that such effects may have been masked in the 20^th century by rising global temperatures