CYCLONE AND STORM SURGE RISK TO MUMBAI
Mumbai has been cited as one of the top 5 megacities to be affected by sea surge due to global warming. The city is also a signatory to the C40 Cities forum for reducing greenhouse gas emissions globally. The Center supported a research project funded by the President's Global Innovation Fund and led by Adam H. Sobel, Professor, Department of Applied Physics and Applied Mathematics and Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences, to assess the risks of storm surge to Mumbai. He was joined by a team of Columbia co-investigators, including Suzana Camargo, Lamont Research Professor, Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, Chia-Ying Lee, Postdoctoral Research Associate at the International Research Institute for Climate and Society, Kyle Mandli, Assistant Professor in Applied Physics and Applied Mathematics, and Michael Tippett, Lecturer in Applied Physics and Applied Mathematics. Read more | Read publication
Preparing for Storm Surge in New York and Mumbai
With a view to bringing research on urban climactic hazards into the public domain, the Center hosted a public lecture on December 12, 2017 by Professor Adam Sobel that served as a timely wake-up call to city agencies, citizens and other stakeholders on the need to build systemic responses and resilience to such disasters. Read more
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Teaching Extreme Weather and Climate Change
Even as Climate Change poses severe risks to the city, systematic research and teaching about the subject lags behind in Mumbai’s colleges. To address this gap, Columbia Global Centers | Mumbai launched a seminar series for building conceptual and methodological capacity among college teachers. The inaugural session was led by Adam Sobel, Professor of Applied Physics and Applied Mathematics at Columbia on December 6, 2019. His presentation showcased the risk to coastal megacities from storms and sea-level rise. Read more
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Nisarga Could Be the Strongest Storm to Hit Mumbai in 70 Years
As I write, the India Meteorological Department has just declared the weather disturbance over the southeast Arabian Sea — just off India’s west coast — to be a Cyclonic Storm (equivalent to ‘Tropical Storm’ on the Saffir-Simpson scale used in the U.S.) and given it the name “Nisarga.” It is currently forecast to make landfall near Mumbai on Wednesday, June 3, with the city bearing the brunt of the storm’s winds, rain and storm surge. Read the full blog here
Adam Sobel is a Professor at Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory and Fu Foundation School of Engineering and Applied Sciences. He is an atmospheric scientist who specializes in the dynamics of climate and weather, particularly in the tropics, on time scales of days to decades. A major focus of his current research is extreme events - such as hurricanes, tornadoes, floods, and droughts, and the risks these pose to human society in the present and future climate. He leads the Columbia University Initiative on Extreme Weather and Climate. Sobel has received the Meisinger Award from the American Meteorological Society, the Excellence in Mentoring Award from the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory of Columbia University, an AXA Award in Extreme Weather and Climate from the AXA Research Fund, and an Ascent Award from the Atmospheric Sciences Section of the American Geophysical Union. Sobel is author or co-author of over 135 peer-reviewed scientific articles, and his book about Hurricane Sandy, Storm Surge, published in October 2014 by Harper-Collins, received the 2014 Atmospheric Science Librarians International Choice Award in the popular category and the 2016 Louis J. Battan Award from the American Meteorological Society. He is currently working on a new project, “Local Processes and Global Constraints in the Indian Monsoon: Understanding for Prediction” supported by the Indian Ministry of Earth Sciences (MoES).
