By Zane Martin Last week hundreds of scientists from around the world attended the Workshop on Sub-seasonal to Seasonal Predictability of Extreme Weather and Climate online and at Columbia University’s bucolic Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory. Organized by Columbia’s International Research Institute for Climate and Society (IRI) and Initiative on Extreme Weather and Climate, in conjunction with the WWRP/WCRP Sub-seasonal to […]
Category: Extreme Weather
Sustainable Development and Collaborative Governance in NYC
On Thursday November 17, 2016 the Conference on Sustainable Development and Collaborative Governance took place at Laguardia Community College. Sponsored by Governor Cuomo, the conference presented many different concepts on how New York State as a whole and more specifically New York City can reap the benefits of becoming leaders in sustainability and resilience. The […]
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. […]
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 […]
Boston breaks seasonal snowfall record
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 […]