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Beyond just the impact on other institutions, the urgency with which Columbia takes climate action bears on its educational mission, says Professor Jason Smerdon, an Earth Institute faculty member and the co-director of the undergraduate Sustainable Development program.

Austral summer precipitation increased by 27% over the past 120 years in southeastern South America (SESA), a region including southern Brazil, Paraguay, Uruguay, and northern Argentina. This trend has driven widespread increases in agricultural production, making it important to understand if the trend will continue or reverse over the coming decades. A new paper led by Arianna Varuolo-Clarke, a 4th-year Ph.D. student in the Smerdon Climate Lab, investigates the influence of the South American low-level jet on SESA precipitation.

Forest fires can have a significant effect on the amount of water flowing in nearby rivers and streams, and the impact can continue even years after the smoke clears.