After rapidly scaling up in strength, Hurricane Harvey has dumped an ‘unprecedented’ amount of rainfall onto Houston, Texas. Lives have been lost, homes flooded, and officials estimate the damages may make this one of the costliest natural disasters in U.S. history. But inevitably, Americans want to know just how ‘natural’ this disaster really was, and what role climate change […]
By Sarah Fecht This post originally appeared on the Earth Institute’s State of the Planet. On Thursday, Harvey was a tropical storm. By the next day it was a Category 2 hurricane, and it strengthened to a Category 4 before hitting southeastern Texas on Friday night. That makes it the strongest tropical cyclone to strike the mainland United States […]
A new paper shows that the average number of tornadoes per outbreak has grown by more than 40% over the last half century. The likelihood of extreme outbreaks – those with many tornadoes – is also greater. Most death and destruction inflicted by tornadoes in North America occurs during outbreaks—large-scale weather events that can last one to […]
Using the IRI Data Library to Predict and Track the 2016 Water Year This post is an excerpt from a story published by IRI on Medium.com, where we are updating the post each month with the latest forecasts. View the full story and forecast maps here. October 1st marks the first day of the new “Water Year” for […]
By Chia-Ying Lee, IRI Postdoctoral Research Scientist This post originally appeared in the Earth Institute’s State of the Planet Blog. It does not feel like summer in New York City as I write, but today (a cool, rainy June 1) is the official start day for the Atlantic hurricane season, which will last until November 30. What […]
Study May Aid Seasonal Forecasting Climate scientists can spot El Niño and La Niña conditions developing months ahead of time, and they use this knowledge to make more accurate forecasts of droughts, flooding and even hurricane activity around the world. Now, a new study shows that El Niño and La Niña conditions can also help […]
By IRI Chief Forecaster Tony BarnstonThis post originally appeared on Climate.gov’s ENSO blog. Reproduced with permission. While the focus of this blog is ENSO, there are other important climate patterns that impact the United States during the Northern Hemisphere winter season. We often focus on the winter season because that is the time of year many climate […]
The Centers for Disease control and Prevention has awarded first prize for its “Predict the Influenza Season Challenge” to a team led by Jeffrey Shaman, an assistant professor at the Mailman School of Public Health at Columbia University and a scientist affiliated with the International Research Institute for Climate and Society. Shaman and colleagues developed a scientifically […]
It’s nearly impossible to pinpoint a particular weather event as caused or made worse by climate change, but during any prolonged duration of exceptional weather, such questions always arise. We want to know if the weather we’re experiencing is actually unusual, if it’s part of larger climatic change and if it’s going to become more […]
Ongoing Flu Season Is Predicted to Peak in January for Most of the Country NEW YORK (January 13, 2014)—Infectious disease experts at Columbia’s Mailman School of Public Health have launched a website that reports weekly predictions for rates of season influenza in 94 cities in the United States based on a scientifically validated system. The […]
By John Allen I’ve been chasing storms in the Great Plains of the United States since 2010, and before that in Australia since 2003. My interest in meteorology started from an encounter with a hailstorm in Sydney, Australia back in 1990, and since then I have had an avid interest in storms that has led […]
The nation’s experts on tornadoes, derechos and other types of “severe convection” had a meeting of the minds earlier this month at Columbia’s Lamont campus to discuss ways of advancing our poor understanding about how the frequency and occurrence of these storms are related to climate variability and change. They also presented the latest efforts at predicting […]
Three of North America’s major rivers run through the Midwestern U.S. In the spring of 2011, major flooding in region caused an estimated $3 billion in damages and killed seven people. Although scientists cannot predict exact precipitation amounts for a given season, they can attempt to predict the odds that a given season will have below average, […]
“We have to stop thinking in terms of ‘100-year events.’ It’s not going to be another 100 years before we see another extreme storm such as Sandy.” – Art Lerner-Lam, deputy director, Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory For years before Hurricane Sandy charged ashore on Monday, researchers from the Earth Institute knew what was coming. In a rapidly […]
by Vanessa Meadu, Francesco Fiondella and Brian Kahn The massive and wide-scale drought that has left American farmers shaking their fists at barren clouds is the fifth-worst on record for the U.S. Eight out of every 10 acres of agricultural land has been affected. As a result, farmers will pull in the lowest corn yield […]
Last month was the warmest March ever recorded in the U.S, according to the National Weather Service. Here in the northeast, we saw daffodils, tulips and the other colorful banners that signal spring unfurl a few weeks earlier than usual. Even though average temperatures were breaking records, however, the early flowering wasn’t extreme or unusual, says Robert […]
Earlier this month, U.S. President Barack Obama and Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh announced a new era of collaboration on agricultural research in the face of climate change. In fact, efforts have been underway since 2009: the Earth Institute’s International Research Institute for Climate and Society (IRI) has been working for the past two years […]
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