Open House 2019

One day a year Lamont hosts an Open House, and researchers from all of Lamont’s divisions set up exhibits around the 189-acre campus to demonstrate the work they do every day and to invite visitors to participate.

Adam Sobel, founding director of Columbia University’s Initiative on Extreme Weather and Climate, based at Lamont, testified last week before the House Science, Space, and Technology Committee.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released a Special Report on Oceans and the Cryosphere in a Changing Climate on September 25. The report states that the 1.5°C increase in temperature will raise sea level enough to displace 280 million people, four times the current number of refugees in the world. The research of Lamont oceanographer Pierre Dutrieux helps to explain the science behind the dire projection.

Officials in Newark, New Jersey, say that water filters distributed by the city have been mostly effective at limiting lead to safe levels in residents’ drinking water. Lamont geochemist Alexander van Geen and lab manager Tyler Ellis analyzed water samples to provide an independent check on the city’s claim.

Climate change disrupts the water cycle in ways that could profoundly alter how we live our lives. A Lamont study has found that higher humidity will make future higher temperatures unbearable in some places, by blocking the cooling effects of our perspiration.

Among the crowd were Lamont graduate students, postdocs, and scientific staff.

Lamont scientists and leading finance professionals will co-develop a new curriculum, entitled “Climate Science and Portfolio Risk.” 

“A heat wave today,” Lamont scientist Park Williams told the Washington Post, “is going to have a much more potent influence on flammability than one 150 years ago when temperatures were 3.5 degrees cooler.”