News

The U.S. Southwest is almost guaranteed to suffer scorching, decades-long "megadroughts" if the world continues producing greenhouse gas emissions at its current pace, a new study warns.  Read More

People living in the American Southwest have seen their share of drought.  But the West's recent water woes may pale in comparison to what's coming later in the century, researchers say.  The Southwest may very well face a decades-long megadrought before the 21t century is out.  Read More

The harsh drought currently gripping California may appear trivial in the future as new research shows that the south-west US faces the looming threat of “megadroughts” that last for decades.  Read More

As a consequence of a warming Earth, the risk of a megadrought – one that lasts more than 35 years – in the American Southwest likely will rise from a low chance over the past thousand years to a 20 to 50 percent chance in this century. However, by slashing greenhouse gas emissions, these risks are nearly cut in half.  Read More

Already dealing with parched conditions, the U.S. Southwest faces the threat of megadroughts this century as temperatures rise, says a new study that found the risk is reduced if heat-trapping gases are curbed.  Read More

People living in the American Southwest have seen their share of drought. But the West's recent water woes may pale in comparison to what's coming later in the century, researchers say. The Southwest may very well face a decades-long megadrought before the 21st century is out.  Read More

Donald Trump did not reject the science of climate change in a statement published yesterday, suggesting instead that the research is incomplete and perhaps less important than expanding access to clean drinking water.  Read More

As California broiled in high temperatures and drought last year, academic institutions across the country released study after study that suggested rising temperatures and less moisture were part of a new normal. Columbia University scientists showed that five centuries have passed since the Golden State has been as dry as it currently is. Read more

If you want to understand how scientists think about their subjects, sit down with a group of them and start a conversation. Two dozen middle and high school educators got that opportunity during a workshop earlier this month with scientists at Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory. Read More

Hydroclimate is an increasing focus of the paleoclimate community and the last several years have seen important data products developed to study hydroclimate variability and change during the Common Era. The workshop Comparing Data and Model Estimates of Hydroclimate Variability and Change Over the Common Era discussed emerging themes. Read more

Throughout the 2016 presidential campaign, The Science Coalition is asking people to answer the question: Why should science matter to the presidential candidates? Watch responses from Jason Smerdon and Columbia University students. Watch the video

When Mount Tambora erupted in 1815, it spewed dust and sulfate aerosols into the stratosphere with a force more powerful than any eruption since.  As the aerosols and particulates circulated around the globe, they cooled the planet, disrupting agriculture and leading to what became known as the “year without a summer.”  Read more

Among firs and cedars high in the Sierra Nevada, scientists are using an array of instruments to monitor the health of the forest, measure the snowpack and track the water that melts and seeps into the soil. A team of scientists including Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory's Justin Mankin and Deepti Singh studied how declines in snowpack will likely affect the water supplies of different regions around the world. Read more.

In this short audio interview, Justin Mankin, a postdoctoral fellow at  Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory and NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, describes how a changing climate may change the way cultures get their water in the spring and summer. Listen to the interview

Europe is warmer now than it has been at any time over the past 2,000 years, new research shows. A new study led by Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory's Edward Cook and involving 45 scientists from 13 countries used tree-ring chronologies to develop a drought atlas of climate history in Europe and the Mediterranean. Read more