Public health professionals are increasingly concerned about the impact climate variability and change can have on infectious diseases such as malaria, dengue fever and bacterial meningitis. However, in order to study the relationships between climate and …
Keep an eye on State of the Planet over the next week for updates on the fall meeting of the American Geophysical Union.
For years before Hurricane Sandy charged ashore on Monday, researchers from the Earth Institute knew what was coming. As the region struggles to recover from this “superstorm,” we asked some of them to consider the lessons we can learn as we move forward.
If you wanted to get a sense of the State of the Planet, you didn’t need to be at the Columbia University conference on Oct. 11. You just needed to follow #SOP2012. Six hundred people gathered at the event to think about the future of sustainable development, while 476 people sent 1,300 tweets, making about 6.2 million impressions through Twitter. And one thread running through the event was that social media is an important way to draw attention to sustainable development issues on an international platform and in a comprehensible way.
The December 2011 precipitation forecast issued by the International Research Institute for Climate and Society called for a 75 percent chance of above normal precipitation over parts of the Philippines between January and March. As the months played out, storms brought roughly eight inches more rain than usual for the period. That’s about 85 percent more than usual. Does this mean the forecast was right? What if the storms never materialized and the region received eight inches of rain less than normal? Would the forecast then have been wrong?
Two acres of cracked earth. In northern Ethiopia, it can be a trap that keeps farmers tethered to it for generations. Or it can be a springboard to a better life for this and future generations. What impedes it from showing its springier qualities? You could argue the biggest pressure on the land comes from the sky above it.
Earth Institute scientists explore how the physical world works on every continent — over and under the arctic ice, in the grasslands of Mongolia, on volcanoes in Patagonia, over subduction zones in Papua New Guinea, and on the streets of New York City.
The current rainy season in the Horn of Africa is off to a poor start, and fear of famine once again looms large for the region.
Many countries and organizations are already investing in climate services, says IRI’s Steve Zebiak. What has been missing until recently is a central platform for capturing experiences and sharing best practices–enter the Climate Services Partnership.
What’s a “climate service”? Depends on whom you ask, which is why it is crucial to bring as many different perspectives to the table, says Guy Brassuer, head of Germany’s Climate Service Center.
State of the Planet is a forum for discussion on varying viewpoints. The opinions expressed by the authors and those providing comments are theirs alone, and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the Earth Institute or Columbia University.
