Alexandra Witze

Contributing Correspondent

Alexandra Witze is a contributing correspondent based in Boulder, Colorado. Among other exotic locales, her reporting has taken her to Maya ruins in the jungles of Guatemala, among rotting corpses at the University of Tennessee's legendary "Body Farm," and to a floating sea-ice camp at the North Pole. She has a bachelor's degree in geology from MIT and a graduate certification in science communication from the University of California, Santa Cruz. Among her honors are the Science-in-Society award from the National Association of Science Writers (shared with Tom Siegfried), and the American Geophysical Union's award for feature journalism. She coauthored the book Island on Fire, about the 18th-century eruption of the Icelandic volcano Laki.

All Stories by Alexandra Witze

  1. Earth

    Climate action could save polar bears

    Cutting fossil fuel emissions soon would retain enough sea ice habitat for threatened species, scientists say.

  2. Earth

    Gassy volcanoes tied to mass extinction

    Chemicals from a massive Siberian eruption 250 million years ago may have polluted the atmosphere and killed off most life on the planet.

  3. Planetary Science

    Saturn’s rings explained

    A huge shattered moon could have sprayed ice particles around the newborn planet.

  4. Earth

    Clouds warm things up

    Satellite data from the last decade put hard numbers on a key and little-understood climate player.

  5. Physics

    Nuclear split surprises

    Physicists spot a new and unexpected type of lopsided fission in the element mercury.

  6. Physics

    Dissolving a puzzle

    A mathematical analysis shows what it takes to remove rock fast enough to create a cavern.

  7. Earth

    Shuttle images reveal Egypt’s lost great lake

    Radar studies of desert drainage patterns point to ancient oases in the Sahara.

  8. Physics

    Negative temperature, infinitely hot

    Physicists propose using ultracold atoms to create a thermodynamics puzzle routinely in the laboratory.

  9. The final climate frontiers

    Scientists aim to improve and localize their predictions.

  10. Physics

    Antimatter, here to stay

    Physicists trap antihydrogen for long enough to study the elusive material.

  11. Earth

    Warm spell spurred tropical biodiversity

    The number of plant species exploded in South America as atmospheric carbon dioxide, and temperatures, rose abruptly about 56 million years ago.

  12. Humans

    Climate researcher speaks out

    BLOG: Michael Mann says scientists have lost control of the public message about climate change, Alexandra Witze reports from the Council for the Advancement of Science Writing meeting.