• Managed Retreat Conference

    The Columbia Climate School and its Earth Institute, will hold a virtual conference 22-25 June 20201 on the subject of managed retreat. conference will address a range of scientific, social, policy, and governance issues around managed retreat (also known as strategic realignment and planned relocation).

  • Drought and Record Heat in the West: The Climate Change Connection

    As intense drought and record heat make their way across the Western U.S., the deep and devastating impacts of this extreme weather are clear — electric utilities are asking consumers to ration power and water, farmers are scrambling to sell or save their produce, and officials are making plans to keep their communities safe and cool. All before true summer weather arrives. Research shows that these extreme events are expected to continue as our climate changes.

  • Exploring the Possible Risks, Benefits of Geoengineering

    Climate change is creating impacts that are widespread and severe — and in many cases irreversible — for individuals, communities, economies, and ecosystems around the world. 2020 was one of the three warmest years on record, bringing with it a number of costly climate disasters, including the worst wildfire season ever recorded in the Western U.S., historic flooding in China and other parts of Asia, and severe droughts in South America. One of the approaches to avoid the most serious, possibly catastrophic impacts, of climate change is solar geoengineering.

  • Difficult Tradeoffs: Climate Change and Dwindling Water Resources

    While a drought grips the southwestern United States and water supplies dwindle, decision-makers face increasingly difficult decisions about who, or what, gets water. Researchers have developed a model — the Framework for Assessment of Complex Environmental Tradeoffs (FACET) — designed to navigate and rigorously evaluate competing environmental, economic, and social impacts.

  • Increasing Pace, Intensity of Climate Hazards to Compound Security Threats: Report

    The other day the Expert Group of the International Military Council on Climate and Security (IMCCS) released its second annual World Climate and Security Report, which warns of the compound security threats posed by the convergence of climate change with other global risks, such as COVID-19.

  • How Does Climate Change Drive Migration, and What Can Be Done about It?

    April saw a 20-year high in the number of people stopped at the U.S./Mexico border, and President Joe Biden recently raised the cap on annual refugee admissions. Stanford researchers discuss how climate change’s effect on migration will change, how we can prepare for the impacts and what kind of policies could help alleviate the issue.

  • Climate Change Increases Extreme Rainfall and the Chance of Floods

    Climate experts warn that, without urgent action, climate change will continue to cause an increase in the intensity of extreme rainfall that can lead to severe flooding.

  • A 20-Foot Sea Wall? Miami Faces the Hard Choices of Climate Change.

    In Miami, the U.S. metropolitan area that is perhaps most exposed to sea-level rise, the problem is not climate change denialism. Patricia Mazzei writes that “the trouble is that the magnitude of the interconnected obstacles the region faces can feel overwhelming, and none of the possible solutions are cheap, easy or pretty.”

  • Retreat from Rising Seas

    As climate change causes seas to rise, coastal communities around the world face a difficult dilemma: Should they fight to keep their homes and communities above water, or accept that moving inland may be the best option?

  • Increasing Flood Risks in the U.K.

    As climate change continues to cause unpredictable and extreme weather events around the world, researchers are calling for engineers to rethink how they design for flood prevention. Flood frequency analysis has been the cornerstone of flood risk control, hydraulic structure design, and water resource management, but the researchers say that flood series in most areas do not follow historical patterns.

  • Tipping Elements Can Destabilize Each Other, Leading to Climate Domino Effects

    Under global warming, tipping elements in the Earth system can destabilize each other and eventually lead to climate domino effects. The ice sheets on Greenland and West Antarctica are potential starting points for tipping cascades, a novel network analysis reveals.

  • Offshore Carbon Capture, Storage

    Carbon capture and storage is the practice of trapping and disposing of carbon dioxide in rock below the seafloor or earth’s surface to reduce buildup of this greenhouse gas in the atmosphere.

  • How Coastal Towns Can Meet the Challenge of Sea Level Rise

    A group of Florida students was invited to participate in the community presentation of the “Envision Resilience Nantucket Challenge,” a competition that tasked participating teams with reimaging how Nantucket, a small island off Cape Cod, could meet the challenges of climate change and sea level rise.

  • Previously Unrecognized Tsunami Hazard to Coastal Cities Identified

    A new study found overlooked tsunami hazards related to undersea, near-shore strike-slip faults, especially for coastal cities adjacent to faults that traverse inland bays. Several areas around the world may fall into this category, including the San Francisco Bay Area, Izmit Bay in Turkey and the Gulf of Aqaba in Egypt.

  • Solar Geoengineering May Alleviate Impacts of Global Warming on Crops

    Solar geoengineering — putting aerosols into the atmosphere to reflect sunlight and reduce global warming — is not a fix-all for climate change but it could be one of several tools to manage climate risks. A growing body of research has explored the ability of solar geoengineering to reduce physical climate changes. But much less is known about how solar geoengineering could affect the ecosystem and, particularly, agriculture.