Climate

Columbia’s campuses were largely spared the ravages of Hurricane Sandy, which destroyed neighborhoods, flooded tunnels, forced hospitals evacuations and knocked out power to millions throughout the region. But many in the tri-state area face a challenging path to recovery.

Last month, in the farm belt of Des Moines, Iowa, the 82-year-old Hillel received the annually awarded $250,000 World Food Prize for his life’s work. 

For the first time, scientists have identified tropical and subtropical species of marine protozoa living in the Arctic Ocean. 

Columbia University President Lee C. Bollinger and Provost John H. Coatsworth have named Sean C. Solomon, a leading geophysicist whose research has combined studies of the deep earth with missions to the moon and the solar system’s inner planets, to be director of Columbia’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory.

The world’s oceans may be turning acidic faster today from human carbon emissions than they did during four major extinctions in the last 300 million years, when natural pulses of carbon sent global temperatures soaring, says a new study in Science. 

Reducing Soot and Methane Would Bring Fast Results, Says Study

A study by a large international team of scientists says that relatively cheap, simple measures to cut two common pollutants could substantially reduce global warming and improve human health and agriculture in coming decades.

Health costs exceeding $14 billion dollars and involving 21,000 emergency room visits, nearly 1,700 deaths, and 9,000 hospitalizations are among the staggering impacts of six climate change-related events in the United States during the last decade, according to a first-of-its-kind study published in November 2011 edition of the journal Health Affairs.

After less than a month in operation, a new NASA satellite has produced the first map showing how saltiness varies across the surface of the world’s oceans.

In the first study of its kind, researchers have linked a natural global climate cycle to periodic increases in warfare.

A team of researchers from Columbia Engineering, Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory, and Rutgers University has now demonstrated that evaporation from the land surface is able to modify summertime rainfall east of the Mississippi and in the monsoonal region in the southern U.S. and Mexico.

The report, “Climate Change and Cities: First Assessment Report of the Urban Climate Change Research Network (ARC3),” is a comprehensive study detailing the risks global cities face due to a warming world.

Stuart Gaffin, research scientist at Columbia’s Center for Climate Systems Research, has been supervising a green rooftop monitoring project at Con Edison’s Learning Center in Queens, NY, home to 21,000 plants on a quarter acre. He estimates the green roof retains 30 percent of precipitation, allowing plants to release the water as vapor, rather than overflowing the city’s sewage systems.