Jason E. Smerdon

Jason E. Smerdon is a Professor of Climate within the Columbia Climate School. He also holds appointments as Co-Senior Director for Education and Co-Director of the Master of Science in Climate program.  He teaches courses on climate, environmental change and sustainable development to undergraduate and graduate students.  Smerdon also lectures widely in public and private settings on the subject of climate change and its social dimensions. He is co-author (with Ed Mathez) of the textbook Climate Change: The Science of Global Warming and Our Energy Future (Columbia University Press, September 2018).

Smerdon’s research focuses on climate variability and change during the past several millennia and how past climates can help us understand future climate change. He publishes widely in the scientific literature on paleoclimate reconstruction techniques, the dynamics of past climate change and variability, and on assessing climate model simulations of the past and future using paleoclimatic information.  His work has been profiled broadly by US and international media, including the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Guardian, Newsweek, BBC, NPR, ABC news, NBC news, and Slate. 

Smerdon received his B.A. from Gustavus Adolphus College with a major in physics, and his M.S. in physics and Ph.D. in applied physics from the University of Michigan.

Common-Era Paleoclimatology, Climate Modeling, Hydroclimate, Climate Variability and Change

• Ph.D., Applied Physics, University of Michigan, 2004
• M.S., Physics, University of Michigan, 2000
• B.A., Physics Major, Gustavus Adolphus College, 1998

• Co-Senior Director for Education, Columbia Climate School
• Co-Director of the MS in Climate Program, Columbia Climate School
• Text Book: Climate Change: The Science of Global Warming and Our Energy Future (Columbia University Press, 2018)