State of the Planet

News from the Columbia Climate School

Tag: volcanoes4

  • Walking in the Shadow of a Great Volcano

    Walking in the Shadow of a Great Volcano

    On a ledge just inside the lip of Chile’s Quizapu volcanic crater, Philipp Ruprecht was furiously digging a trench. Here at an elevation of 10,000 feet, a 1,000-foot plunge loomed just yards away, and wind was whipping dust off his shovel. But the volcanologist was excited. Ruprecht had just found this spot, topped with undisturbed…

  • Photo Essay: In the Shadow of a Great Volcano

    Photo Essay: In the Shadow of a Great Volcano

    High in the southern Andes, Chile’s Quizapu crater is one of South America’s most fearsome geologic features. In 1846, it was the source of one the continent’s largest historically recorded lava flows. In 1932, it produced one of the largest recorded volcanic blasts. The volcano is currently inactive, but could revive at any time. What…

  • From Top to Bottom: Scientists Map a New Island Volcano

    From Top to Bottom: Scientists Map a New Island Volcano

    One of the earth’s newest islands exploded into view from the bottom of the southwest Pacific Ocean in January 2015, and scientists sailing around the volcano this spring have created a detailed map of its topography.

  • Weber, Plank Elected to American Academy of Arts and Science

    Weber, Plank Elected to American Academy of Arts and Science

    Elke Weber, who studies how people make decisions and how they think about climate change, and Terry Plank, who probes deep into the Earth’s interior to study magma and how volcanoes erupt, are among the members elected to the American Academy of Arts and Science this year.

  • Accounting for Volcanoes Using Tools of Economics

    Accounting for Volcanoes Using Tools of Economics

    Climate scientists teamed up with an econometrics expert to develop an innovative new method for picking out past volcanic eruptions in temperature reconstructions going back millennia and gauging their impact on the climate.

  • ‘Popping Rocks’ and Robots

    ‘Popping Rocks’ and Robots

    It turns out that studying lava flows at the bottom of the ocean uses many of the same methods as studying lava flows on other planets, writes Lamont’s Elise Rumpf.

  • Peering into Chile’s Quizapu Volcano

    Peering into Chile’s Quizapu Volcano

    In their quest to unravel the physical and chemical processes controlling volcanic eruptions, Einat Lev and colleagues headed to South America and the volcanoes of Chile.

  • Testing the Speed of Lava: What It Says about Escape Times & Mars

    Testing the Speed of Lava: What It Says about Escape Times & Mars

    Elise Rumpf’s lava flow simulations are yielding new details about the velocity of lava over different surfaces. They may also hold clues about the surfaces of other planets.

  • American Geophysical Union 2015: Key Earth Institute Events

    American Geophysical Union 2015: Key Earth Institute Events

    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.

  • Walking in the Shadow of a Great Volcano

    Walking in the Shadow of a Great Volcano

    On a ledge just inside the lip of Chile’s Quizapu volcanic crater, Philipp Ruprecht was furiously digging a trench. Here at an elevation of 10,000 feet, a 1,000-foot plunge loomed just yards away, and wind was whipping dust off his shovel. But the volcanologist was excited. Ruprecht had just found this spot, topped with undisturbed…

  • Photo Essay: In the Shadow of a Great Volcano

    Photo Essay: In the Shadow of a Great Volcano

    High in the southern Andes, Chile’s Quizapu crater is one of South America’s most fearsome geologic features. In 1846, it was the source of one the continent’s largest historically recorded lava flows. In 1932, it produced one of the largest recorded volcanic blasts. The volcano is currently inactive, but could revive at any time. What…

  • From Top to Bottom: Scientists Map a New Island Volcano

    From Top to Bottom: Scientists Map a New Island Volcano

    One of the earth’s newest islands exploded into view from the bottom of the southwest Pacific Ocean in January 2015, and scientists sailing around the volcano this spring have created a detailed map of its topography.

  • Weber, Plank Elected to American Academy of Arts and Science

    Weber, Plank Elected to American Academy of Arts and Science

    Elke Weber, who studies how people make decisions and how they think about climate change, and Terry Plank, who probes deep into the Earth’s interior to study magma and how volcanoes erupt, are among the members elected to the American Academy of Arts and Science this year.

  • Accounting for Volcanoes Using Tools of Economics

    Accounting for Volcanoes Using Tools of Economics

    Climate scientists teamed up with an econometrics expert to develop an innovative new method for picking out past volcanic eruptions in temperature reconstructions going back millennia and gauging their impact on the climate.

  • ‘Popping Rocks’ and Robots

    ‘Popping Rocks’ and Robots

    It turns out that studying lava flows at the bottom of the ocean uses many of the same methods as studying lava flows on other planets, writes Lamont’s Elise Rumpf.

  • Peering into Chile’s Quizapu Volcano

    Peering into Chile’s Quizapu Volcano

    In their quest to unravel the physical and chemical processes controlling volcanic eruptions, Einat Lev and colleagues headed to South America and the volcanoes of Chile.

  • Testing the Speed of Lava: What It Says about Escape Times & Mars

    Testing the Speed of Lava: What It Says about Escape Times & Mars

    Elise Rumpf’s lava flow simulations are yielding new details about the velocity of lava over different surfaces. They may also hold clues about the surfaces of other planets.

  • American Geophysical Union 2015: Key Earth Institute Events

    American Geophysical Union 2015: Key Earth Institute Events

    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.