News from the Columbia Climate School

Author: Kevin Krajick37

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.

Did the Oceans Influence Human Evolution?

Scientists often invoke climate as a possible factor in human evolution; but only recently have they developed the ability to get enough information about past climates and related fossil evidence to see any details. A half-dozen leading paleontologists and climate scientists discussed recent advances in a symposium this week at the annual meeting of the…
Global Climate Modeling for the Masses: You Can Try This at Home

Since 2005, the Educational Global Climate Modeling Project has been downloaded 50,000 times, and adopted for teaching and research at hundreds of universities and other institutions.
Putting the ‘Death’ Back Into Death Valley?

Popular Tourist Stop May Have More Potential to Explode Than Thought
Scientists Make Progress in Assessing Tornado Seasons

Study Offers First Step in Short-Term Forecasting
In Himalayas, Assessing Climate Threats to Ice, and Water Supply

Bhutan’s Melting Glaciers May Affect Farming, Hydropower, Floods
Natural Disasters: The Upside

Floods, volcanoes, earthquakes–really, very little good news comes out of this sort of thing. Maybe the occasional feel-good story about, say, a child miraculously dug from the rubble days later, tired but unharmed and in good spirits, having survived on a cache of crackers and Coke. Actually, says John Mutter, an Earth Institute professor of sustainability studies, disasters can sometimes…
Under the Dead Sea, Warnings on Climate and Earthquakes

An international team of scientists drilling deep under the bed of the Dead Sea has found evidence that the sea may have dried up during a past warm period analogous to scenarios for climate change in coming decades. With nations in the volatile region already running short on water, the finding could be a…
Ethiopian Farmers Get First Payouts From New Crop Insurance Project

An innovative crop insurance program that protects small African farmers against extreme weather made its first payouts last week, to growers in northern Ethiopia. The pilot “microinsurance” program gave a total of $17,392 to 1,800 farmers in seven villages, following a drought earlier this year. The HARITA (Horn of Africa Risk Transfer for Adaptation) pilot was…
Farmers, Flames and Climate: Are We Entering an Age of ‘Mega-Fires’?

For millennia, people have set fires to clear land for cultivation, pastures or hunting; so-called slash-and-burn agriculture is still common across much of tropical Africa, Asia and South America. It has been a useful strategy–but …

Did the Oceans Influence Human Evolution?

Scientists often invoke climate as a possible factor in human evolution; but only recently have they developed the ability to get enough information about past climates and related fossil evidence to see any details. A half-dozen leading paleontologists and climate scientists discussed recent advances in a symposium this week at the annual meeting of the…
Global Climate Modeling for the Masses: You Can Try This at Home

Since 2005, the Educational Global Climate Modeling Project has been downloaded 50,000 times, and adopted for teaching and research at hundreds of universities and other institutions.
Putting the ‘Death’ Back Into Death Valley?

Popular Tourist Stop May Have More Potential to Explode Than Thought
Scientists Make Progress in Assessing Tornado Seasons

Study Offers First Step in Short-Term Forecasting
In Himalayas, Assessing Climate Threats to Ice, and Water Supply

Bhutan’s Melting Glaciers May Affect Farming, Hydropower, Floods
Natural Disasters: The Upside

Floods, volcanoes, earthquakes–really, very little good news comes out of this sort of thing. Maybe the occasional feel-good story about, say, a child miraculously dug from the rubble days later, tired but unharmed and in good spirits, having survived on a cache of crackers and Coke. Actually, says John Mutter, an Earth Institute professor of sustainability studies, disasters can sometimes…
Under the Dead Sea, Warnings on Climate and Earthquakes

An international team of scientists drilling deep under the bed of the Dead Sea has found evidence that the sea may have dried up during a past warm period analogous to scenarios for climate change in coming decades. With nations in the volatile region already running short on water, the finding could be a…
Ethiopian Farmers Get First Payouts From New Crop Insurance Project

An innovative crop insurance program that protects small African farmers against extreme weather made its first payouts last week, to growers in northern Ethiopia. The pilot “microinsurance” program gave a total of $17,392 to 1,800 farmers in seven villages, following a drought earlier this year. The HARITA (Horn of Africa Risk Transfer for Adaptation) pilot was…
Farmers, Flames and Climate: Are We Entering an Age of ‘Mega-Fires’?

For millennia, people have set fires to clear land for cultivation, pastures or hunting; so-called slash-and-burn agriculture is still common across much of tropical Africa, Asia and South America. It has been a useful strategy–but …