Research and analysis of the Polar Regions and their impact on global climate.
Sequestration of CO2 generated by power plants by injection into deep aquifers (geological sequestration) has been proposed as a possible alternative for the reduction of excessive green
We all know that climate is either going to change, or is already doing so, as a result of human activities changing the atmosphere's composition and its land surface.
| Name | Title | Fields of interest | |
|---|---|---|---|
 |
Taro Takahashi | Ewing Lamont Research Professor | CO2 cycling through oceans and atmosphere; industrial CO2 accumulation. |
 |
Alexander Van Geen | Lamont Research Professor | Geochemistry |
Since the late 1990s, global warming has stabilized, even as greenhouse gases have risen. That defies simple models that say the temperature should keep going up. Many scientists think the so-called “hiatus” is taking place in part because much of the heat trapped in the atmosphere by greenhouse gases is being soaked up and stored by the oceans–at least for now. The Pacific is believed to play an especially powerful role, with winds in its eastern regions sweeping heat into its depths, like dirt getting swept under the rug. The problem is, scientists checking under the rug by measuring subsurface temperatures have not necessarily found the predicted increases in heat. This has come to be known as the riddle of the “missing heat.” A team of oceanographers now says they know where it went: It has been exported from the Pacific to the Indian Ocean. Their study, out this week in the journal Nature Geoscience, finds that this movement may account for more than 70 percent of all heat absorbed by the entire upper world ocean in the past decade.
Scientists have long suspected that ocean acidification caused the crisis—similar to today, as manmade CO2 combines with seawater to change its chemistry. Now, for the first time, scientists have quantified the extent of surface acidification from those ancient days, and the news is not good: the oceans are on track to acidify at least as much as they did then, only at a much faster rate.
As the last ice age was ending, about 13,000 years ago, a final blast of cold hit Europe, and for a thousand years or more, it felt like the ice age had returned. But oddly, despite bitter cold winters in the north, Antarctica was heating up. For the two decades since ice core records revealed that Europe was cooling at the same time Antarctica was warming over this thousand-year period, scientists have looked for an explanation.
Every day since Jan. 1, 1896, an observer has hiked up a grey outcrop of rock to a spot at The Mohonk Preserve, a resort and nature area some 90 miles north of New York City, to record daily temperature and other conditions there.
Scientists broadly agree that global warming may threaten the survival of many plant and animal species; but global warming did not kill the Monteverde golden toad, an often cited example of climate-triggered extinction, says a new study.
A new study adds evidence that climate swings in Europe and North America during the last ice age were closely linked to changes in the tropics. The study, published this week in the journal Science, suggests that a prolonged cold spell...
", broadcast on July 7th & July 9th 2009 as part of a three part series on energy and climate.
As politicians and environmentalists prepare for the UN Climate Change talks in December to discuss urgent reduction of CO2 emissions, the BBC asked what is the future for global energy production?
U.S. scientists working on a research vessel in the Gulf of Mexico have made the most promising discovery so far of marine gas hydrate, a possible new energy source.
Potential Alternative Fuel, Usually Too Thinly Spread to Exploit
Researchers have reconstructed atmospheric carbon dioxide levels over the past 2.1 million years in the sharpest detail yet, shedding new light on its role in the earth’s cycles of cooling and warming.
A power plant in Iceland is set to become the first in the world to try turning carbon dioxide emissions into solid minerals underground, starting this September.
In an $11 million pilot project, Reykjavik Energy will capture CO2 from its plant, dissolve the gas in water and inject it deep into volcanic basalt nearby. Over the nine-month study, some 2,000 tons of greenhouse gas will be treated.
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.
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.
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.
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 20th century by rising global temperatures
North American Ice Sheet Dwindled Fast in Conditions Like Today's
In the face of warming climate, researchers have yet to agree on how much and how quickly melting of the Greenland ice sheet may contribute to sea level rise.
Nutrients washed out of the Amazon River are powering huge amounts of previously unexpected plant life far out to sea, thus trapping atmospheric carbon dioxide, according to a new study.
A study released on May 11, 2007 provides some of the first solid evidence that warming-induced changes in ocean circulation at the end of the last Ice Age caused vast quantities of ancient carbon dioxide to belch from the deep sea into the atmosphere. Scientists believe the carbon dioxide (CO2) releases helped propel the world into further warming.
Seismologists at Columbia University and Harvard University have found a new indicator that the Earth is warming: "glacial earthquakes" caused when the rivers of ice lurch unexpectedly and produce temblors as strong as magnitude 5.1 on the moment-magnitude scale, which is similar to the Richter scale. Glacial earthquakes in Greenland, the researchers found, are most common in July and August, and have more than doubled in number since 2002.
 |
Taro Takahashi Wins Top U.N. Award for Environmental Leadership | |
 |
Links between CO2 and Climate throughout Earth History | Lamont Doherty's Earth Science Colloquium |
 |
What Good Are Climate Models? | Earth Science Colloquium |
 |
The Dilemma of Global Dimming | Lecture, Open House 2006 |
