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 Elqui River basin in Chile’s Coquimbo region is one of the driest places on Earth. It receives only about 100 millimeters (4 inches) of rain each year, and most of it during one short rainy season. The rainfall isalso highly variable. In some years, the region will get close to zero rainfall, while in […]
Diseases influenced by climate include malaria, dengue fever and cholera. Changes in climate can alter how these and other infectious diseases develop and spread. Scientists at the International Research Institute for Climate Society (IRI) research ways to mitigate the effects of current transmission and future changes of such diseases as participants in the Pan American Health Organization […]
The Sahel is a semiarid region south of the Sahara Desert that stretches from the Atlantic Ocean to the Red Sea. In the 1970s and 1980s it was hit by a series of persistent droughts and recurring famines, epitomized by the 1984 famine in Ethiopia. The Sahel remains one of the poorest and least developed […]
Climate in Africa’s Sahel region varies dramatically from one year to the next and often threatens farmers’ livelihoods. In Kaffrine, Senegal, the CGIAR Research Program on Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security, the Senegalese National Meteorological Agency, the country’s agriculture extension service, the Earth Institute’s International Research Institute for Climate and Society and many farmers […]
Predicting malaria outbreaks before they occur and improving crop yield forecasts from space might sound like science fiction, but they’re projects going on at the International Research Institute for Climate and Society (IRI). This spring, Climate and Society students Caitlin Reid and Sunny Ng jumped headlong into them as part of a NASA internship. Reid and Ng worked with […]
A version of this post originally appeared on the Climate and Society Hot Topics blog. Otis Redding wraps up his acclaimed 1965 album Otis Blue with “You Don’t Miss Your Water.” The refrain “you don’t miss your water ’til your well runs dry” was originally written by William Bell and inspired by his feelings of homesickness for his native Memphis […]
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 […]
A new two-year climate change initiative, led by the International Research Institute for Climate and Society aims to help farmers in Indonesia, the Lao People’s Democratic Republic and Bangladesh reduce their vulnerability to climate risks. The International Fund for Agricultural Development is the primary project sponsor and the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has provided additional resources. The project was […]
A new two-year climate change initiative, led by the International Research Institute for Climate and Society aims to help farmers in Indonesia, the Lao People’s Democratic Republic and Bangladesh reduce their vulnerability to climate risks. The International Fund for Agricultural Development is the primary project sponsor and the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has provided additional resources. […]