Topic: Ecosystems
Two-tiered reconstruction of Late Pleistocene to Holocene changes in the freezing level height in the largest glacierized areas of the Colombian Andes
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Lisa Ilboudo Nébié: Studying Food Security, Environmental Changes and Migration in West Africa
Nébié studies how environmental changes impact communities around the world, and how communities adapt.

IRI@AGU: Schedule of Events 2019
A range of IRI’s areas of expertise will be represented at this year’s annual meeting of the American Geophysical Union (AGU). Below is the schedule of IRI’s posters and presentations in sequential order. SUNDAY, DECEMBER 8 World Climate Research Programme 40th Anniversary Symposium Lisa Goddard WCRP is celebrating its 40th year of international climate science. We […]

IRI@AGU: Schedule of Events 2018
A range of IRI’s areas of expertise will be represented at this year’s annual meeting of the American Geophysical Union (AGU). Below is the schedule of IRI’s posters and presentations in sequential order. MONDAY Climate Services Research and Development: Adapting to Climate Today Lisa M Goddard is the primary convener for both a presentation and poster […]
IRI papers make Environmental Research Letters ‘Top 30’ for 2017
Editors at Environmental Research Letters selected two papers written by scientists at the International Research Institute for Climate and Society for the journal’s Highlights of 2017 special issue. The issue features 30 research articles picked for their significance, scientific impact, breadth of appeal and other criteria. “This collection features seminal findings on climate education, oil […]

IRI@AGU: Schedule of Events 2017
A range of IRI’s areas of expertise will be represented at this year’s annual meeting of the American Geophysical Union (AGU). One scientist will present on a tool for supporting decision making in agriculture. Another presentation focuses on improving our fundamental ability to predict tropical cyclones. Security under changing conditions is a major theme in […]
A quantitative evaluation of the multiple narratives of the recent Sahelian “re-greening”
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The Science of Predicting Fires
By Rebekah Heath On the tails of the destructive California wildfires of this year, the 2017 Conference on Fire Prediction Across Scales is scheduled to take place October 23-25 at Columbia University. Globally, fires play an important role in climate change, as they emit both aerosols and greenhouse gases into the atmosphere at accelerated rates. […]

Tackling Sleeping Sickness in Maasai Communities
Powerful new tool helps rural Tanzanians reduce their exposure to tsetse flies and the deadly disease they carry. Pietro Ceccato remembers his first trip three years ago to a Maasai village located a two hour’s drive south of Arusha, Tanzania. He was there with a team of public health researchers to learn more about the […]
Local ecological knowledge and incremental adaptation to changing flood patterns in the Amazon delta
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Fragmentation increases wind disturbance impacts on forest structure and carbon stocks in a western Amazonian landscape
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Heightened fire probability in Indonesia in non-drought conditions: the effect of increasing temperatures
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Rising Temperatures Lead to Increased Fire Risk in Indonesia
A new paper published in the journal Environmental Research Letters, shows that rising temperatures have increased the risk of fires even during non-drought years in Indonesia, possibly making mild fire seasons in the country a thing of the past. The study was conducted by scientists at IRI, the International Center for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT), Temple University and the Center for International […]

Heightened Fire Activity Predicted for Amazon in 2016
The IRI has developed a forecast maproom that characterizes the expected fire activity in the Amazon based on climate conditions for the upcoming dry season. Kátia Fernandes, along with Walter Baethgen and Lisa Goddard, have been researching how the Amazon fires are influenced by large-scale ocean phenomena and how sea surface temperature (SST) forecasts can […]

El Niño 2015 Conference Report
In November 2015, the International Research Institute for Climate and Society at Columbia University, in collaboration with the World Meteorological Organization, the U.S. Agency for International Development and the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, convened the El Niño 2015 Conference. The report from this conference is now available. In addition to recordings and summaries of the […]
Two summers of São Paulo drought: Origins in the western tropical Pacific
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IRI@AMS 2016: Schedule of Events
From crowd-sourcing tornado data to teaching Harlem high-school students about climate change and climate justice, IRI scientists will be sharing a number of fascinating projects at the annual meeting of the American Meteorological Society (AMS) next week in New Orleans. Below is a schedule of their presentations and posters. Presenting authors appear in bold. Crowd-Sourcing the Storm: A New […]
Decadal covariability of Atlantic SSTs and western Amazon dry-season hydroclimate in observations and CMIP5 simulations
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The Atlantic Ocean holds the key to western Amazon rainfall
By Samuel McGlennon This post is an excerpt of a piece on the website for the Center for International Forestry Research. View the full article here. In 2010, catastrophic fires ravaged huge tracts of the western Amazon, a region of rainforest that until just a few years earlier was considered beyond the reach of serious drought. Those […]
A Climate Generator for Agricultural Planning in Southeastern America
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Land Cover Change Interacts With Drought Severity to Change Fire Regimes in Western Amazonia
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Study: El Niño’s Impacts on Water, Agriculture and Health
By Ben Orlove and Ángel Muñoz A new study examines the degree to which decision makers working in key sectors–agriculture, water and health–have been able to make successful use of forecasts of El Niño and La Niña. We find that these forecasts have indeed often been put into use, but only when two conditions have been […]
Climate prediction tools show role of oceans in Amazon drought
— CIFOR Blog
Seasonal Drying In The Amazon Has Greater Impact Than Previously Thought
— redOrbit

Risk of Amazon Rainforest Dieback Higher than IPCC Projects
This article is a modification from the original press release issued by The University of Texas at Austin’s Jackson School of Geosciences A new study suggests the southern portion of the Amazon rainforest is at a much higher risk of dieback due to climate change than projections made in the latest report by the Intergovernmental Panel […]
Climate and environmental information for ecosystem services. (Submitted)
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Managing Water in a Dry Land
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 […]
Locust plagues point to grim future of climate change
— China Dialogue
Rising Tides and Shrimp from the Banks of the Amazon Forest
A team of scientists from the Earth Institute, including IRI’s Katia Fernandez, have come to the Amazon delta to find out how communities are adapting. The researchers want to understand how the climate is changing, and how they can help with better forecasting and strategies for adaptation as part of a project titled, “Socio-Cultural Adaptations of […]
IRI Project Report: Building Capacity to Produce and Use Climate and Environmental Information for Improving Health in East Africa
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Options for support to agriculture and food security under climate change
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Are We Entering an Age of Mega-Fires?
For millennia, people have set fires to clear land for cultivation, pastures or hunting; so-called slash-and-burn agriculture is still common across much of tropical Africa, Asia and South America. It has been a useful strategy, but it is now becoming problematic. A new Earth Institute story and documentary, shot in the Peruvian Amazon, follows the […]
Climate change threatens a fragile ecosystem in the Andes
In the Andes mountains of Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, and Venezuela, tucked between the tree line and the line of permanent snow, is the páramo, a unique and hauntingly beautiful mountainous wetland that is threatened by climate change and growing temperature extremes. The páramo of the Northern Andes is wet and cold. Temperatures can dip below […]
To Burn, or Not to Burn
Imagine smoke and haze so thick it causes ships to crash into each other, shuts down airports and sends millions of people to the hospital with respiratory problems. This was the scene in Southeast Asia in 1997 and 1998, when land-clearing fires set by massive palm oil plantations and small scale farmers burned out of […]
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