Profile
Jason E. Smerdon is a Professor of Climate within the Columbia Climate School. He also serves as Vice Dean of Academic Planning, a role in which he oversees the facilitation and design of all degree programs within the Climate School. Having held multiple leadership roles in the Climate School since its founding in 2020, Smerdon played a central role in designing and implementing two new groundbreaking masters programs and several associated certificate and dual degree programs. From 2011-2023, Smerdon also co-directed the Undergraduate Program in Sustainable Development (now the Office of Undergraduate Programs), a program that more than doubled in size during his tenure (reaching approximately 200 enrolled students), and one in which he led the design and implementation of a new minor and collaborative major in Climate and Sustainability. Smerdon teaches courses on climate, quantitative methods, and sustainable development to undergraduate and graduate students. He also lectures widely in public and private settings on the subject of climate change and its impacts. 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.
Fields of interest:
Paleoclimatology, Climate Modeling, Hydroclimate, Statstical Climatology, Climate Variability and Change
Education
- Ph.D., Applied Physics, University of Michigan, 2004
- M.S., Physics, University of Michigan, 2000
- B.A., Physics Major, Gustavus Adolphus College, 1998
Educational Activities
- Vice Dean of Academic Planning
- Text Book: Climate Change: The Science of Global Warming and Our Energy Future (Columbia University Press, 2018)