Author: Kevin Krajick5

Kevin Krajick is the Columbia Climate School’s senior editor for science news. He grew up in the Catskill Mountains and Hudson Valley of upstate New York, where he worked at his high-school newspaper. He started his professional career as a reporter covering crime, police and prisons across the United States. He has since reported from all 50 U.S. states and 30-some countries, writing about science, medicine, immigration and other subjects. His work has been featured in National Geographic, Newsweek, The New Yorker, Science, Smithsonian and many other publications. He was a 1981 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 widely praised 2001 book “Barren Lands” is the true account of how two prospectors discovered 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 wife and a tiny white dog.

Cutting Confederate Ties, the U.S. Navy Names Ships for a Pioneering Female Oceanographer and a Daring Enslaved Pilot

Marie Tharp was a marine scientist in a man’s world. Robert Smalls was a skilled sailor, but held as a slave. Both are now being honored by the U.S. Navy.
Explorer of Deep Earth Wins Vetlesen Prize

Using sophisticated equipment, David Kohlstedt has recreated the pressure, temperature and chemical conditions in the Earth’s mantle, which humans cannot observe directly. His findings have laid the basis for understanding many of the processes that drive the planet’s dynamics.
New York City’s Greenery Absorbs a Surprising Amount of Its Carbon Emissions

A hyper-local study of vegetation shows that the city’s trees and grass often cancel out all the CO2 released from cars, trucks and buses on summer days.
With Major Prize, a Project to Turn Carbon Emissions to Stone Gains Momentum

With the award of a 2022 Earthshot prize, new technology to remove carbon from the air by speeding up natural underground chemical reactions moves closer to reality.
American Geophysical Union 2022: Key Research From the Columbia Climate School

A guide to some of the most provocative and groundbreaking talks at the world’s largest gathering of earth and space scientists.
A Study Offers New Insights Into the Record 2021 Western North America Heat Wave

Several weeks during summer 2021 saw heat records in the western United States and Canada broken not just by increments, but by tens of degrees, an event of unprecedented extremity. To what degree was it climate change, bad luck, or a combination?
Building Green Energy Facilities May Produce Substantial Carbon Emissions, Says Study

Moving from fossil fuels to solar panels, wind turbines and other renewable energy sources will by itself create a new stream of carbon emissions with the construction so much new infrastructure. The good news: Speeding the transition would greatly reduce this effect.
She Led Scientists Advising New York on Climate Change. Did the City Listen?

Cynthia Rosenzweig co-chaired the New York City Panel on Climate Change, an expert body advising the mayor, from its inception four years before Hurricane Sandy, and well after. Here, she assesses what was learned, and done, before and after.
The ‘Cassandra of the Subways’ on Hurricane Sandy, Ten Years Later

Klaus Jacob predicted for years how the New York City subways would flood in a superstorm. Finally, authorities began to listen, but long-term preventive action came too little, too late.

Cutting Confederate Ties, the U.S. Navy Names Ships for a Pioneering Female Oceanographer and a Daring Enslaved Pilot

Marie Tharp was a marine scientist in a man’s world. Robert Smalls was a skilled sailor, but held as a slave. Both are now being honored by the U.S. Navy.
Explorer of Deep Earth Wins Vetlesen Prize

Using sophisticated equipment, David Kohlstedt has recreated the pressure, temperature and chemical conditions in the Earth’s mantle, which humans cannot observe directly. His findings have laid the basis for understanding many of the processes that drive the planet’s dynamics.
New York City’s Greenery Absorbs a Surprising Amount of Its Carbon Emissions

A hyper-local study of vegetation shows that the city’s trees and grass often cancel out all the CO2 released from cars, trucks and buses on summer days.
With Major Prize, a Project to Turn Carbon Emissions to Stone Gains Momentum

With the award of a 2022 Earthshot prize, new technology to remove carbon from the air by speeding up natural underground chemical reactions moves closer to reality.
American Geophysical Union 2022: Key Research From the Columbia Climate School

A guide to some of the most provocative and groundbreaking talks at the world’s largest gathering of earth and space scientists.
A Study Offers New Insights Into the Record 2021 Western North America Heat Wave

Several weeks during summer 2021 saw heat records in the western United States and Canada broken not just by increments, but by tens of degrees, an event of unprecedented extremity. To what degree was it climate change, bad luck, or a combination?
Building Green Energy Facilities May Produce Substantial Carbon Emissions, Says Study

Moving from fossil fuels to solar panels, wind turbines and other renewable energy sources will by itself create a new stream of carbon emissions with the construction so much new infrastructure. The good news: Speeding the transition would greatly reduce this effect.
She Led Scientists Advising New York on Climate Change. Did the City Listen?

Cynthia Rosenzweig co-chaired the New York City Panel on Climate Change, an expert body advising the mayor, from its inception four years before Hurricane Sandy, and well after. Here, she assesses what was learned, and done, before and after.
The ‘Cassandra of the Subways’ on Hurricane Sandy, Ten Years Later

Klaus Jacob predicted for years how the New York City subways would flood in a superstorm. Finally, authorities began to listen, but long-term preventive action came too little, too late.