In Lamont’s 2015 Annual Report, an article by Stacy Morford summarizes some of the research on climate and extreme weather risk going on at Lamont.
CU Extreme Wx Blog
Rapidly intensifying hurricanes and bunched-up tornadoes
Category: Uncategorized
Two recent papers in Nature Communications by Columbia researchers focus on properties that emerge when one analyzes the statistical distributions of two different types of severe storms – tropical cyclones and tornadoes. Both highlight the most extreme instances of these already extreme events, and find surprising behavior in both, though in quite different ways. The first paper, […]
Spontaneous clumping of tropical clouds
If you take a look at nearly any satellite image of clouds in the tropics (for example, the GOES west geostationary satellite image from a few days ago), you’ll notice that convective clouds (the tall thunderstorm clouds associated with strong circulations) tend to be organized into clusters. This clustering ranges from features such as squall […]
First Extremes Workshop: Mission Accomplished
Our workshop, Extreme Weather and Climate: Hazards, Impacts, Actions, happened yesterday. For me, it went by in a blur. A little like attending your own wedding, you’re so caught up in it that you can’t quite tell how you’d react to it if you weren’t. But maybe that feeling of being overwhelmed was partly due to the content. […]
The purpose of our first Extremes Workshop, May 6
Category: Uncategorized
This coming Wednesday, May 6, we will have our first science workshop for the Extremes Initiative. We’re calling it Extreme Weather and Climate: Hazards, Impacts, Actions, and it will be an intense day of science talks. We’ve left time in the program for discussion as well. So although the crowd looks like it will be […]
Clouds, circulation and climate sensitivity
I’m a co-author on a paper that appeared last week in Nature Geoscience entitled “Clouds, Circulation and Climate Sensitivity”. This paper describes a “Grand Challenge”, one of several activities with that label, all begun in the last couple of years under the World Climate Research Programme (WCRP). For about another three weeks, the paper is freely […]
Kickoff event video now online
On February 23 we formally launched the Initiative with an event in the Columbia World Leaders Forum series. After some introductory remarks by Executive VP for Research Michael Purdy, and then some by me, the main attraction was a panel discussion. The panel covered lessons learned in New York City from Sandy about how to prepare for […]
Super Typhoon Maysak
Category: Tropical Cyclones
Right now in New York City it is 48 F, still cold (at least to me, since I’ve only lived in Taipei and Miami), but we know spring is finally stepping in. In the meantime, for people in another part of the world, the western north Pacific, nature has already given them a sign […]
Boston breaks seasonal snowfall record
Categories: Climate Variability, Extreme Weather
As of 7 pm Sunday March 15, this winter became the snowiest on record in Boston, MA with 108.6 inches, surpassing the previous record of 107.6 inches set in the winter of 1995/1996. This winter has been extreme in every sense of the word, from heavy snowfall and cold temperatures to sea ice in the […]
Hello World
Category: Uncategorized
This is the new blog for the Columbia Initiative on Extreme Weather and Climate. We hope to feature semi-regular posts by a team of writers that will include some of our young scientists, postdoctoral research associates in particular, as well as myself and other senior people. We will comment on extreme weather events, summarize research […]