Kevin Krajick's articles Environmental Science Dinosaurs Thrived After Ice, Not Fire, Says a New Study of Ancient Volcanism – State of the Planet 201.6 million years ago, one of the Earth’s five great mass extinctions took place, when three-quarters of all living species suddenly disappeared. The wipeout coincided with massive volcanic eruptions that split apart Pangaea, a giant continent then comprising almost all the planet’s land. Millions of cubic miles of lava erupted over some 600,000 years, separating […] Written by Kevin Krajick October 30, 2024October 30, 2024 Saving Bookmark this article Bookmarked Environmental Science Ancient Ocean Sediments Reveal Analog to Human-Influenced Warming – State of the Planet Between 59 million and 51 million years ago, Earth experienced dramatic warming periods—both a gradual one stretching millions of years, and more sudden spikes known as hyperthermals, measured in thousands to tens of thousands of years. Scientists agree that higher temperatures were driven in large part by increases in the amount of carbon dioxide in […] Written by Kevin Krajick September 4, 2024September 4, 2024 Saving Bookmark this article Bookmarked Environmental Science Ancient Plant, Insect Bits Confirm Greenland Melted in Recent Geologic Past – State of the Planet The story of Greenland keeps getting greener—and scarier. A new study provides the first direct evidence that the center—not just the edges—of Greenland’s ice sheet melted away in the recent geologic past, and that the now ice-covered island became home to a living tundra landscape. A team of scientists reexamined a few inches of sediment from the […] Written by Kevin Krajick August 6, 2024August 6, 2024 Saving Bookmark this article Bookmarked Environmental Science Study Challenges Popular Idea That Easter Islanders Committed ‘Ecocide’ – State of the Planet Some 1,000 years ago, a small band of Polynesians sailed thousands of miles across the Pacific to settle one of the world’s most isolated places—a small, previously uninhabited island they named Rapa Nui. There, they erected hundreds of “moai,” or gigantic stone statues that now famously stand as emblems of a vanished civilization. Eventually, their […] Written by Kevin Krajick June 24, 2024June 24, 2024 Saving Bookmark this article Bookmarked Environmental Science Cascadia Subduction Zone, One of Earth’s Top Hazards, Comes Into Sharper Focus – State of the Planet Off the coasts of southern British Columbia, Washington, Oregon and northern California lies a 600 mile-long strip where the Pacific Ocean floor is slowly diving eastward under North America. This area, called the Cascadia Subduction Zone, hosts a megathrust fault, a place where tectonic plates move against each other in a highly dangerous way. The […] Written by Kevin Krajick June 10, 2024June 10, 2024 Saving Bookmark this article Bookmarked Environmental Science Was It an Alien Spacecraft—Or a Supply Truck? – State of the Planet On Jan. 8, 2014, a meteor raced by means of Earth’s environment off Papua New Guinea, exploded right into a fireball over the ocean, and disappeared. That will have been the top of it. Apart from Harvard astronomer Abraham “Avi” Loeb, who in 2019 analyzed information from low-frequency sound sensors run by the U.S. Division […] Written by Kevin Krajick April 9, 2024April 9, 2024 Saving Bookmark this article Bookmarked
Environmental Science Dinosaurs Thrived After Ice, Not Fire, Says a New Study of Ancient Volcanism – State of the Planet 201.6 million years ago, one of the Earth’s five great mass extinctions took place, when three-quarters of all living species suddenly disappeared. The wipeout coincided with massive volcanic eruptions that split apart Pangaea, a giant continent then comprising almost all the planet’s land. Millions of cubic miles of lava erupted over some 600,000 years, separating […] Written by Kevin Krajick October 30, 2024October 30, 2024 Saving Bookmark this article Bookmarked
Environmental Science Ancient Ocean Sediments Reveal Analog to Human-Influenced Warming – State of the Planet Between 59 million and 51 million years ago, Earth experienced dramatic warming periods—both a gradual one stretching millions of years, and more sudden spikes known as hyperthermals, measured in thousands to tens of thousands of years. Scientists agree that higher temperatures were driven in large part by increases in the amount of carbon dioxide in […] Written by Kevin Krajick September 4, 2024September 4, 2024 Saving Bookmark this article Bookmarked
Environmental Science Ancient Plant, Insect Bits Confirm Greenland Melted in Recent Geologic Past – State of the Planet The story of Greenland keeps getting greener—and scarier. A new study provides the first direct evidence that the center—not just the edges—of Greenland’s ice sheet melted away in the recent geologic past, and that the now ice-covered island became home to a living tundra landscape. A team of scientists reexamined a few inches of sediment from the […] Written by Kevin Krajick August 6, 2024August 6, 2024 Saving Bookmark this article Bookmarked
Environmental Science Study Challenges Popular Idea That Easter Islanders Committed ‘Ecocide’ – State of the Planet Some 1,000 years ago, a small band of Polynesians sailed thousands of miles across the Pacific to settle one of the world’s most isolated places—a small, previously uninhabited island they named Rapa Nui. There, they erected hundreds of “moai,” or gigantic stone statues that now famously stand as emblems of a vanished civilization. Eventually, their […] Written by Kevin Krajick June 24, 2024June 24, 2024 Saving Bookmark this article Bookmarked
Environmental Science Cascadia Subduction Zone, One of Earth’s Top Hazards, Comes Into Sharper Focus – State of the Planet Off the coasts of southern British Columbia, Washington, Oregon and northern California lies a 600 mile-long strip where the Pacific Ocean floor is slowly diving eastward under North America. This area, called the Cascadia Subduction Zone, hosts a megathrust fault, a place where tectonic plates move against each other in a highly dangerous way. The […] Written by Kevin Krajick June 10, 2024June 10, 2024 Saving Bookmark this article Bookmarked
Environmental Science Was It an Alien Spacecraft—Or a Supply Truck? – State of the Planet On Jan. 8, 2014, a meteor raced by means of Earth’s environment off Papua New Guinea, exploded right into a fireball over the ocean, and disappeared. That will have been the top of it. Apart from Harvard astronomer Abraham “Avi” Loeb, who in 2019 analyzed information from low-frequency sound sensors run by the U.S. Division […] Written by Kevin Krajick April 9, 2024April 9, 2024 Saving Bookmark this article Bookmarked
