News from the Columbia Climate School

Author: Kevin Krajick40

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.

The Caribbean’s Growing Disaster Hotspots

The 125 million people of the Caribbean/Gulf of Mexico region are highly exposed to hurricanes, floods and landslides–and it is not only because of bad weather. Increasing numbers of the poor are crowding into confined areas that are most prone to destruction–low-lying flood plains, too-steep hillsides, and the like. Robert Chen, director of the Center for International Earth…
Honoring a Pioneer in Planetary Evolution

David Walker, a professor of geochemistry at Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, will be honored tonight by colleagues at the American Geophysical Union for decades of groundbreaking work to understand the early formation of the moon and Earth. Walker will receive the AGU’s Harry H. Hess Medal, awarded for “outstanding achievements in research of the constitution and evolution of Earth and…
India’s Water Is Running Out

India is running “the largest water-mining project in the world”–and it cannot be sustained much longer, Columbia Water Center researcher Shama Perveen told an audience on Monday. That is mainly because farmers, who depend heavily on irrigation water drawn from underground aquifers, are using far more water than rainfall can replenish. Perveen’s talk, “Quantifying the…
Deep Ocean Heat Is Melting Antarctic Ice

Like dirt swept under the carpet, it appears that much of the human-made heat produced over the last century has been getting soaked up by the world’s oceans, and sinking into deep waters.
18,000 Scientists–In One Place

This week marks the world’s largest annual gathering of earth and space scientists: the five-day December meeting of the American Geophysical Union. There will be about 18,000 of them, spread across two giant San Francisco convention halls giving talks and discussing the latest in their fields. Scores of researchers from the Earth Institute will be…
Making Sense of Earth Data: A Guide

Charts, graphs and maps representing natural phenomena can be a challenge to anyone trying to extract something meaningful from them. A new book, Earth Science Puzzles: Making Meaning From Data, aims to help students of earth and environmental sciences decode images by presenting practice puzzles consisting of real-world scientific data. The authors are Kim A. Kastens and Margie Turrin of…
Measuring Earthquakes in Western New York

Each year, dozens of small, mostly harmless earthquakes quakes rattle the northeastern United States and southern Canada, and one quite active area runs along the shores of lakes Erie and Ontario, in western New York. In order to learn more about what generates these, and the possible threat of something bigger, scientists at Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth…
Study Affirms Gulf Oil Spill’s Vastness

First Independent Measure of Well Employs New Imaging Method
Irrigation’s Cooling Effects May Mask Warming–For Now

If Water Runs Short, Some Regions May Suffer Significantly

The Caribbean’s Growing Disaster Hotspots

The 125 million people of the Caribbean/Gulf of Mexico region are highly exposed to hurricanes, floods and landslides–and it is not only because of bad weather. Increasing numbers of the poor are crowding into confined areas that are most prone to destruction–low-lying flood plains, too-steep hillsides, and the like. Robert Chen, director of the Center for International Earth…
Honoring a Pioneer in Planetary Evolution

David Walker, a professor of geochemistry at Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, will be honored tonight by colleagues at the American Geophysical Union for decades of groundbreaking work to understand the early formation of the moon and Earth. Walker will receive the AGU’s Harry H. Hess Medal, awarded for “outstanding achievements in research of the constitution and evolution of Earth and…
India’s Water Is Running Out

India is running “the largest water-mining project in the world”–and it cannot be sustained much longer, Columbia Water Center researcher Shama Perveen told an audience on Monday. That is mainly because farmers, who depend heavily on irrigation water drawn from underground aquifers, are using far more water than rainfall can replenish. Perveen’s talk, “Quantifying the…
Deep Ocean Heat Is Melting Antarctic Ice

Like dirt swept under the carpet, it appears that much of the human-made heat produced over the last century has been getting soaked up by the world’s oceans, and sinking into deep waters.
18,000 Scientists–In One Place

This week marks the world’s largest annual gathering of earth and space scientists: the five-day December meeting of the American Geophysical Union. There will be about 18,000 of them, spread across two giant San Francisco convention halls giving talks and discussing the latest in their fields. Scores of researchers from the Earth Institute will be…
Making Sense of Earth Data: A Guide

Charts, graphs and maps representing natural phenomena can be a challenge to anyone trying to extract something meaningful from them. A new book, Earth Science Puzzles: Making Meaning From Data, aims to help students of earth and environmental sciences decode images by presenting practice puzzles consisting of real-world scientific data. The authors are Kim A. Kastens and Margie Turrin of…
Measuring Earthquakes in Western New York

Each year, dozens of small, mostly harmless earthquakes quakes rattle the northeastern United States and southern Canada, and one quite active area runs along the shores of lakes Erie and Ontario, in western New York. In order to learn more about what generates these, and the possible threat of something bigger, scientists at Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth…
Study Affirms Gulf Oil Spill’s Vastness

First Independent Measure of Well Employs New Imaging Method
Irrigation’s Cooling Effects May Mask Warming–For Now

If Water Runs Short, Some Regions May Suffer Significantly