News from the Columbia Climate School

Author: Kevin Krajick35

Kevin Krajick was from 2007-2025 the senior editor for science news at the Earth Institute and the Columbia Climate School. He grew up in the Catskill Mountains and Hudson Valley of upstate New York, where he worked at his high-school newspaper. He has since reported from all 50 U.S. states and 30-some countries, writing about science, medicine, crime, immigration and other issues. His work has appeared in National Geographic, Newsweek, The New Yorker, Science, Smithsonian and many other publications. He was a finalist for the National Magazine Award for Public Service for his reporting on organized crime’s links to the toxic waste-disposal industry. He is two-time winner of the American Geophysical Union’s Walter Sullivan Award for Excellence in Science Journalism, and his work has been featured repeatedly in the yearly book “Best American Science and Nature Writing.” His 2001 book “Barren Lands” is the true account of how two prospectors discovered vast deposits of diamonds in Canada’s remote far north. Krajick holds degrees in comparative literature and journalism from Columbia University. He lives on the Upper West Side of Manhattan with his family.

Watering the World’s Crops, Drop by Drop

Dr. Daniel Hillel was recently honored with the World Food Prize for his pioneering work in sustainable agriculture.
A Forest Reserve Is Not an Island

Biologist Marina Cords has been studying monkey social behavior in western Kenya’s protected Kakamega Forest since 1979. Her work has led to insights about how primates manage conflicts, mate and carry out other social functions closely related to human behavior.
2010 Korea Bomb ‘Tests’ Probably False Alarms, Says Study

Amid Nuclear Tensions, a Seismic Reality Check
Forest Razing by Ancient Maya Worsened Droughts, Says Study

Human-Influenced Climate Change May Have Contributed to Society’s Collapse
Seeking the Deadly Roots of the Dinosaurs’ Ascent

Over the past 450 million years, life on earth has undergone at least five great extinctions, when biological activity nosedived and dominant groups of creatures disappeared. The final one (so far) was 65 million years ago, when it appears that a giant meteorite brought fires, shock waves and tsunamis, then drastically altered the climate. That killed off…
Along an Ancient Coast, Clues to a Global Extinction

Wave-washed sea cliffs along the coasts of western England and Wales are home to spectacular assemblages of rocks and fossils that may hold keys to understanding a sudden global extinction 201.4 million years ago that cleared the way for the rapid evolution of dinosaurs. Paleontologist Paul Olsen and geologist Dennis Kent of Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty…
The Triassic and Today: Hinge Points in Earth’s History

Paleontologist Paul Olsen has been investigating the causes of Triassic-Jurassic extinction–a turning point in earth’s history that wiped out many life forms and started the reign of dinosaurs. More than 200 million years separate us from this catastrophe (also called the End-Triassic Extinction), but it could contain some lessons for us today, says Olsen. For…
Tropical Plankton Invade Arctic Waters

Researchers See Natural Cycle; But Questions Arise on Climate Change
When the World Ended in Ice

A mile or so of glacial ice covering much of North America and plowing down from the north once terminated in the New York metropolitan area, at a front stretching roughly from exit 13 on the New Jersey Turnpike (Rahway), on across southern Staten Island, the Bensonhurst neighborhood of Brooklyn, and northeastward through Long Island. But exactly when that ice started…

Watering the World’s Crops, Drop by Drop

Dr. Daniel Hillel was recently honored with the World Food Prize for his pioneering work in sustainable agriculture.
A Forest Reserve Is Not an Island

Biologist Marina Cords has been studying monkey social behavior in western Kenya’s protected Kakamega Forest since 1979. Her work has led to insights about how primates manage conflicts, mate and carry out other social functions closely related to human behavior.
2010 Korea Bomb ‘Tests’ Probably False Alarms, Says Study

Amid Nuclear Tensions, a Seismic Reality Check
Forest Razing by Ancient Maya Worsened Droughts, Says Study

Human-Influenced Climate Change May Have Contributed to Society’s Collapse
Seeking the Deadly Roots of the Dinosaurs’ Ascent

Over the past 450 million years, life on earth has undergone at least five great extinctions, when biological activity nosedived and dominant groups of creatures disappeared. The final one (so far) was 65 million years ago, when it appears that a giant meteorite brought fires, shock waves and tsunamis, then drastically altered the climate. That killed off…
Along an Ancient Coast, Clues to a Global Extinction

Wave-washed sea cliffs along the coasts of western England and Wales are home to spectacular assemblages of rocks and fossils that may hold keys to understanding a sudden global extinction 201.4 million years ago that cleared the way for the rapid evolution of dinosaurs. Paleontologist Paul Olsen and geologist Dennis Kent of Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty…
The Triassic and Today: Hinge Points in Earth’s History

Paleontologist Paul Olsen has been investigating the causes of Triassic-Jurassic extinction–a turning point in earth’s history that wiped out many life forms and started the reign of dinosaurs. More than 200 million years separate us from this catastrophe (also called the End-Triassic Extinction), but it could contain some lessons for us today, says Olsen. For…
Tropical Plankton Invade Arctic Waters

Researchers See Natural Cycle; But Questions Arise on Climate Change
When the World Ended in Ice

A mile or so of glacial ice covering much of North America and plowing down from the north once terminated in the New York metropolitan area, at a front stretching roughly from exit 13 on the New Jersey Turnpike (Rahway), on across southern Staten Island, the Bensonhurst neighborhood of Brooklyn, and northeastward through Long Island. But exactly when that ice started…