The Secondary School Field Research Program offers a diverse group of young people a unique opportunity to do field and laboratory research.

Are you a Columbia faculty, researcher or staff person with work related to sustainability, climate or earth and environmental science? We invite you to join the Earth Institute community by becoming an Affiliate.

Sources and story ideas for journalists during ‘Covering Climate Now,’ Climate Week, and beyond.

In celebration of Earth Month and Earth Day, our scientists are tackling reader questions on science and sustainability.

The Real-Time Earth initiative is upgrading the technological capabilities of Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory and transforming the way its scientists study our planet.

Trump’s proposed budget includes an effort to shrink funding for university-based science research and the national labs run by the Department of Energy. Research on fundamental earth systems science is also cut as is funding for state environmental agencies and national environmental emergency response.

The vast majority of scientists around the world agree that our climate is changing at a faster rate than ever recorded in human history because of our use of fuels such as coal and oil, so-called fossil fuels. The conclusion rests on basic physics known since the early 1800s, when physical scientists first recognized that carbon dioxide, then a recently discovered gas, could act as a sort of greenhouse, preventing heat introduced by the sun from escaping back into space – the “greenhouse effect.”

Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory has been a leader in the study of our planet since its founding 65 years ago. Today, Observatory scientists continue the institution’s long tradition of addressing important questions in the Earth and planetary sciences. 

Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory graduate student Natalie Accardo recently returned from Tanzania and Malawi, where she installed seismic instruments in both countries alongside Lamont seismologists Donna Shillington and Jim Gaherty. Natalie produced this video, which shows the scientists and their Tanzanian colleagues conducting a “stomp test” at one of their sites in the Tanzanian village of Manda.

Scientists from Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory are trying to determine how high sea levels may rise in the future by studying the shorelines of the past. Led by a team of researchers including Lamont climate scientist and marine geologist Maureen Raymo, the goal of Pliomax is to increase the accuracy of global sea level estimates for the Pliocene era, which occurred about 3 million years ago.