Research News 2018

The American Geophysical Union fall meeting is being held Dec. 10-14 in Washington, D.C. Here is a chronological guide to key talks and other events from Columbia University’s Earth Institute.

A concerted, multidisciplinary, and international effort is needed to tackle this complexity, scientists argue in a paper released today.

A guide to wildfire experts at the Earth Institute.

I had one last day installing seismometers with the team, then left for Mandalay. After a breakfast with colleagues, I had a free day to explore Mandalay Hill.

On the way back to Kale, we stopped at a Catholic church where one of the seismometers will be deployed. The seismic team is now in Nay Pyi Taw, the capital preparing for the seismic instrument deployment. 

We drove 15 hours over two days to get to Kale, our new home base. Here, we managed to build a monument and install our first GPS station in only one day. Our homemade post-driver worked amazingly well.

The Trump administration is attempting to rescind almost all the policies to fight climate change proposed or enacted by the Obama administration. Could this send us over the climate tipping points?

The Global Famine of 1876-1878 was one of the worst humanitarian disasters in history, killing as many people as World War II. A new analysis suggests it could happen again, only worse because of climate change.

A small team of scientists ventures out onto the Greenland ice sheet to study the forces large and small that are accelerating the melting of the world’s second-largest ice mass.

Scientists and staff from Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory and the Earth Institute share some of the ways they’re shrinking their carbon footprints.

Using newly refined analysis methods, scientists have discovered that a North Korean nuclear bomb test last fall set off aftershocks over a period of eight months on a previously unmapped earthquake fault nearby.

By enhancing climate models, a project will help to improve forecasts of intense hurricanes like Hurricane Florence.

Experts from around the Earth Institute weigh in on some of the biggest questions about Hurricane Florence.

An extensive investigation by the Reuters news agency has found that many children living on U.S. military bases may be exposed to hazardous levels of lead in family housing units.

Two Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory scientists affiliated with the Center for Climate and Life are leading research that examines some of the ways climate change affects the health of the ocean.

The American Geophysical Union, the world’s largest and most distinguished Earth and space science society, has announced its newest Fellows, and among the honorees are two Lamont scientists.

The American Geophysical Union honors the outstanding work of three Lamont scientists.

For this early part of the season the goal is to tease apart a record of historic precipitation and temperature for this region using isotopes from leaf waxes collected in the lake sediments.

Researchers from the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory are exploring how volcanic inputs are influencing ocean health in Hawaii.

Rising temperatures and humidity could make summers unbearable in the southeastern U.S. and beyond, according to a study published in December.

Snow on Ice is launching into the field with two teams of scientists this summer. The first group, an ‘advance team’ of six women, will focus on lakes where meltwater has collected on the southwestern flank of Greenland bedrock.

The gift will be used to fast-track innovative high-risk, high-reward projects aimed at delivering science-based solutions to address the challenges of climate change.

Even if we limit global warming to no more than 2°C above preindustrial levels, as the Paris Agreement aims, the world is in store for some dramatic changes, according to a new study.

Yutian Wu, an atmospheric scientist seeking to understand how the rapid decline of Arctic sea ice will impact North American weather extremes, is the Center’s newest Fellow.

Thousands of years ago, the West Antarctic ice sheet shrank dramatically—then grew back in an unexpected way.

For anyone who has ever wished there were more hours in the day, geoscientists have some good news: Days on Earth are getting longer. Very slowly.

Intensifying river floods caused by global warming may hamper national economies worldwide, and effects might propagate through global trade and supply networks, a new study says.

Volcanologist Einat Lev shares incredible footage of steam plumes, lava fountains, and more from the Kilauea eruption.

In a new study in Science Advances, researchers at Columbia University show that machine learning algorithms could pick out different types of earthquakes from three years of earthquake recordings at Geysers in California. The repeating patterns of earthquakes appear to match the seasonal rise and fall of water-injection flows into the hot rocks below, suggesting a link to the mechanical processes that cause rocks to slip or crack, triggering an earthquake.

A new study has uncovered when and why the native vegetation that today dominates much of Australia first expanded across the continent.

Columbia scientists recently visited the Caribbean island of Barbados, whose fossilized coral reefs contain an exquisite record of how the ocean has risen and fallen in the past.

Sediments deposited over thousands of years provide a window to the past—and may perhaps shed light on what happened to the island’s now-lost civilization.

Climate scientist Radley Horton is bringing the effects of sea level rise to the attention of decision-makers and fostering discussions to help society confront climate change.

An international collaboration will study the wasting of the Thwaites glacier, which already accounts for around 4 percent of current global sea-level rise, and could collapse within decades or centuries.

Polar scientists Marco Tedesco and Robin Bell provide a primer on how climate change will impact our coastlines.

For decades, scientists believed that the Greenland Ice Sheet is relatively stable compared with the vulnerable West Antarctic Ice Sheet. Two Lamont scientists questioned this assumption about Greenland’s ice and wanted to take a much closer look.

Two new papers find that the line that divides the moist East and arid West is edging eastward due to climate change—and the implications for farming and other pursuits could be huge.

Sykes helped to establish plate tectonic theory in the 1960s. He is professor emeritus at the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory.

Lead poisoning has been in the news often over the last few years. Local high school students are helping Lamont scientists test lead exposure levels from lead-contaminated soils in New York City.

A generous donation of marine seismic technology equipment from CGG Inc. is enabling Lamont to advance its world-class ocean research capacities and opens the door to new areas of sub-seafloor exploration, including an expanded understanding of the undersea dynamics of earthquakes and tsunamis as well as climate science and impacts of sea level change.

Lamont’s Robin Bell is one of the world’s leading polar investigators and has been tracking ice for thirty years. She has coordinated ten expeditions to Antarctica and Greenland. And although she took her first expedition to Antarctica back in the 1980s, there is nothing routine about her approach.

Citizen scientists can gather data to help uncover how snow is changing over time.

On every continent and every ocean, Lamont researchers are studying climate, geology, natural hazards, ecology and more. Here is a list of projects in rough chronological order.

On January 31 at 1:00 p.m. EST, Lamont-Doherty’s Hugh Ducklow and his colleagues will use National Science Foundation social media to discuss their research on Antarctic ecology.

Researchers create first model for hurricane hazard assessment that is both open source and capable of accounting for climate change.

Rainfall changes caused by global warming will increase river flooding risks across the globe by the 2040s, says a new study. The study finds that the increases will be greatest in much of the United States, central Europe, Indonesia, and parts of India and Africa.