Research News 2004
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11/02/04 The annual meeting of the Geological Society of America is the principal forum for presentation and discussion of the latest ideas in geoscience education. The following are presentations by Columbia University scientists at this year’s meeting in Denver, Colorado on November 7, 2004. |
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10/29/04 A unique collaborative project assessing natural disasters and the risks to human populations and economic activity will provide a quantitative basis for risk-conscious investments in sustainable development worldwide. The final report, “Global Natural Disaster Risk Hotspots,” will be published by The World Bank this winter. |
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10/28/04 A team from the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory at Columbia University has received funding from the National Science Foundation to develop the first international digital registry to provide unique identification of solid earth samples. |
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10/05/04 Severe drought in western states in recent years may be linked to climate warming trends, according to new research, led by scientists from the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory of The Earth Institute at Columbia University, to be published in the journal Science. This research was supported by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and the National Science Foundation (NSF). |
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10/05/04 Not enough is know about what triggers major droughts, yet they occur all across North America often having greater economic and social impacts than any other type of natural disaster. Losses due to drought in the United States alone average $6-8 billion each year, with a high of $39 billion for the three-year drought of 1987-89. |
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09/28/04
The Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory of Columbia University is pleased to announce the purchase of a new research vessel. The new ship will replace the Lamont-operated R/V Maurice Ewing, which has accumulated well over half a million miles of track in its service to science and exploration of ocean and deep Earth processes. |
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09/09/04
As a geologist, Peter Kelemen, who was recently appointed the Arthur Storke Memorial Professor of Geochemistry at Columbia University, has ascended to 7,500 meters on a Himalayan peak and plummeted into the Atlantic to 5,500 meters. He has worked as a consultant on mineral exploration projects where the terrain was too steep for average geologists. He has traveled via snowmobile, helicopter and climbing rope, all in the pursuit of secrets of the Earth's crust. more |
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08/13/04 Not long ago, scientists discovered that the Earth’s climate is capable of changing abruptly, as if a switch were flipped. In the past, this kind of abrupt change may have caused droughts, floods and even regional cooling. A national documentary unit has produced a radio documentary and a website that examines the potential impact of global warming. |
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08/04/04
As part of its mission to fund scientific research that will provide a global census of various forms and quantities of carbon and the natural and manmade factors that regulate carbon, NASA recently announced a $671 thousand grant to Dr. Ajit Subramaniam, a Doherty Associate Research Scientists with the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, part of the Earth Institute at Columbia University. |
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07/07/04
Deep in the Antarctic interior, buried under thousands of meters (more than two miles) of ice, lies Lake Vostok, the world's largest subglacial lake. Scientists believe that the waters of Lake Vostok have not been disturbed for hundreds of thousands of years, and there are tantalizing clues that microbes, isolated for at least as long, may exist. |
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06/30/04
Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory and the G. Unger Vetlesen Foundation will award the 2004 Vetlesen Prize, considered among the most prestigious of earth sciences awards, to Professors Richard Peltier and Sir Nicholas Shackleton. The prize carries a cash value of $200,000 to be split between the honorees. |
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06/18/04
What causes the peaks and valleys of the world’s great mountains? For continental ranges like the Appalachians or the Northwest’s Cascades, the geological picture is clearer. Continents crash or volcanoes erupt, then glaciers erode away. Yet scientists are still puzzling out what makes the highs high and the lows low for the planet’s largest mountain chain, the 55,000-mile-long Mid-Ocean Ridge. |
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06/11/04
For years, researchers have examined climate records indicating that millennial-scale climate cycles have linked the high latitudes of the Northern hemisphere and the subtropics of the North Pacific Ocean. What forces this linkage, however, has been a topic of considerable debate. |
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06/03/04
New York, New York — The National Science Foundation (NSF) has awarded the Tree-Ring Laboratory of Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, Columbia University, a $5.5 million grant to study one of the largest climate systems affecting the globe—the Asian monsoon climate system. |
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05/26/04
Two centuries since the start of the Industrial Revolution, the human population has increased six-fold, and economic activity an estimated fifty-fold. The sheer number of people on the planet and the intensity of economic activity are having profound effects on the long-term global climate, threatening to disrupt vast biological, geochemical, and social systems in future decades. This is fact. |
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05/14/04
Over the last four decades, scientists have observed a 1.3% per decade decline in the amount of sun reaching the Earth’s surface. This phenomenon, coined “solar dimming” or “global dimming,” is due to changes in clouds and air pollution that are impeding the suns ability to penetrate. |
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05/06/04
After careful examination of data, an international team of scientists confirmed yesterday the existence of a major undersea volcano on the seafloor of the Antarctic Sound, near the northern-most tip of Antarctica. Scientists announced their discovery yesterday from the Research Vessel L. M. Gould which has been struggling through ice-covered seas in the Antarctic. The team is led by Hamilton College's Eugene Domack and includes Gerd Krahmann from the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory. (Krahmann is part of the CORC/ARCHES expedition and has written about this trip in his Reports From the Field.) |
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04/30/04
This fact sheet is intended to provide a concise summary of the state of knowledge about the Ramapo Fault System and earthquakes in the greater New York City metropolitan area. The Ramapo Fault System is part of the largest seismically active province in this region. |
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04/14/04
For scientists studying climate change, the past is often a key to understanding the future. Dake Chen at Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory recently used more than a century of climate data to successfully test an improved model of ENSO, the El-Niño/Southern Oscillation that scientists believe is behind climate change in many parts of the world. |
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03/18/04 Each spring, the Observatory hosts a series of public lectures on its Palisades, New York campus. |
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03/12/04 Finding the epicenter of earthquakes has not changed since the 1930s, and this method can result in errors of several miles. But seismologists David P. Schaff and Paul G. Richards, from Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, part of the Earth Institute, have developed a method that increases scientists' ability to pinpoint an earthquake's epicenter, resulting in new findings in earthquake patterns in China. |
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03/08/04 To foster discussion on changes in the polar regions, and in preperation for the planning of the International Polar Year (IPY) 2007-08, Jeffrey Sachs, director of the Earth Institute held a meeting of polar experts that was presided over by Ólafur Ragnar Grímsson, President of Iceland, on Arctic and Antarctic issues that have both local and global impacts.
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02/05/04 The Hudson River Estuary, a stretch of the Hudson River from Troy, N.Y. to its mouth in New York Harbor, has begun a new stage of its life say geologists at Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory and Queens College in Flushing, N.Y. Researchers at both institutions have found that, aside from a few very specific locations, the estuary may have largely stopped filling in with new sediment. |
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LECTURE Tuesday, February 3, 2004, 4:00 p.m. Recent headlines have revealed the fragility of the international bans on nuclear weapons proliferation and testing. Dr. Paul G. Richards is one of the seismologists from Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory responsible for developing the methods used to distinguish between earthquakes and explosions. In his presentation, Richards will discuss the use of seismological methods to detect, identify, locate, and determine the size of underground nuclear explosions. He will also discuss the successes and difficulties of taking this objective technical information into a charged political arena where there are deep divides on the issues of arms control. |
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01/07/04
Results from one of the most comprehensive studies of erosion of the earth's surface have revealed the detailed spatial pattern of erosion in the Taiwan mountain belt. The findings, recently reported in NATURE, provide evidence that mountain erosion can be directly related to large earthquakes and storms. Taiwan is one of the most rapidly eroding mountain belts on earth, with average erosion rates of 3-6 mm per year and extreme rates of 60 mm per year in some areas of weak rock that have recently experienced large earthquakes and storms. |
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01/05/04 Columbia University researchers have found that steel dust generated in the New York City subway significantly increases the total amount of airborne iron (Fe), manganese (Mn) and chromium (Cr) that riders breathe. The airborne levels of these metals associated with fine particulate matter in the subway environment were observed to be more than 100 times greater than levels observed in home indoor or outdoor settings in New York City. Their research findings are scheduled to appear in the January 15th issue of Environmental Science & Technology, a peer-reviewed journal of the American Chemical Society, the world's largest scientific society. |
Global Natural Disaster Hotspots
New Data System to Improve Geoscience Research
Drought in the West Linked to Warmer Temperatures America
Geologist Ascends Peaks and Dives to the Ocean Floor, Looking for Secrets of Earth’s Crust
"Climate of Uncertainty:" Public Radio Project Examines the Impact of Global Warming
Columbia University Investigator Receives NASA Grant to Map Carbon in Eastern Atlantic Waters
New Map of Antarctica's Lake Vostok Reveals Two Distinct Parts, With Possibly Differing Ecosystems
Vetlesen Prize of $200,000 is Awarded for Achievement in Climate Sciences Research
New Observations on Shape of Ocean Mountain Ranges Turn an Old Idea Upside Down
Fifty-Two Thousand Years of Marine Fertility Sheds New Light on Forces Behind Climate Change
Could Global Warming Mean Less Sunshine and Less Rainfall?
Marine Scientists Discover New Undersea Volcano in Antarctica
Earthquakes and the Ramapo Fault System in Southeastern New York State
By Looking Back, Scientists See a Bright Future for Climate Change Forecasting
Are Earthquakes Related?
Earth Institute Experts and President of Iceland Discuss Changing Polar Environments 
Researchers from the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, part of the Earth Institute, are participating in an ambitious effort to organize the International Polar Year scheduled in 2007-2008. Dr. Robin Bell, a Doherty Senior Research Scientist at the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, and a vice chair of the International Council of Scientific Unions, the organization that is spearheading international support and participating in this program, is quoted in an article by the journal Science. 
Hudson River Estuary Enters Middle Age
Monitoring Nuclear Explosions: Why, How, and What is Learned?
Links Between Erosion, Runoff Variability And Seismicity In The Taiwan Orogen
Columbia and Harvard University Researchers Conduct Study on Toxic Exposures in Urban Environments