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Excess carbon dioxide absorbed into the oceans is starting to have profound effects on marine life, from oysters to tiny snails at the base of the food chain. Our scientists explain the changes and what they are learning about ocean acidification in the past.

For Justin Mankin, the MPA in Environmental Science and Policy program helped expose his passion for environmental science. Mankin is currently serving as an Earth Institute postdoctoral fellow and research scientist, where he is focusing on climate variability.

While national governments can set goals for combating climate change, many of the decisions that lead to action will come from business leaders. The new Columbia Center for Climate and Life helps them build from a foundation of science.

The impacts of climate change are being felt around the world, but the changes in the polar regions have been more pronounced. The world began to take notice to these changes when an ice shelf roughly the size of Rhode Island collapsed into the ocean in 2002.

A new study uses sediment cores to track the expansion and retreat of glaciers through time, and finds that they are retreating quickly and are more sensitive to temperature change than previously realized.

LiDar (Light Detection and Ranging) is a remote sensing technique that uses light to develop an elevation image of the surface of the Earth. It is sensitive enough to image small items such as seals lying on the ice surface.

Scientists at Columbia University’s Earth Institute will present important findings at the American Geophysical Union fall 2015 meeting, Dec. 14-18–the world’s largest gathering of earth and space scientists.

The latest team celebration is around the magnetometer data. Magnetics has evolved quite a bit over the years of geophysical sampling. Lamont scientist Robin Bell recalls when in the 1990s working on a project in West Antarctica that the magnetometer was towed on a winch ~100 meters behind the aircraft – now it is nearly cheek to cheek with other instruments!

When the most recent eruption of Hawaii’s Kilauea volcano started last June, Melvin Sugimoto at first did not think much of it. Hawaii, where he has lived all his life, is made entirely of hardened lava, and Kilauea, perhaps the world’s most active volcano, has been adding more off and on for the last 300,000 years. “Lava is… read more

If just the West Antarctic Ice Sheet were to melt, it would raise global sea level by 6 meters. That’s more than a theoretical problem. West Antarctica is losing ice mass, and scientists are worried.

Earth’s magnetic field is getting weaker, but it may simply be coming down from an abnormally high intensity rather than being a sign of an impending geomagnetic reversal.