NPR Climate Change

A sunken house in Fairbanks, Alaska. (Barbara Moran/WBUR)

Alaska's thawing permafrost leaves residents on thin ice

Alaska's melting permafrost — frozen soil, rock and underground — is threatening the quality of life for many residents.

This rural county banned renewables. Now it's having second thoughts

One rural county in Idaho that outright banned renewable development in 2024 is having second thoughts.

Will even one of the U.N.'s 17 'sustainable development goals' be met by 2030?

Kamala Thiagarajan

The 17 goals agreed upon by world leaders are incredibly ambitious. Are we even close to achieving any of them? If we don't, is the project a failure?

Guy Davies, an inspector for the Florida Division of Plant Industry, checks an orange tree for the insect Asian citrus psyllid that carries the bacterium causing disease, "citrus greening," from tree to tree on May 13, 2013, in Fort Pierce, Florida.

Could trees developed with gene-editing technology protect Florida's citrus industry?

Catherine Welch

A bacterial infection is wiping out Florida's citrus trees. Growers hope a rootstock developed with gene-editing technology could keep the disease at bay.

People's houses are collapsing into the ocean. FEMA gives them no other option

Rebecca Hersher, Ryan Kellman

Waterfront homes are collapsing along the coast. Homeowners generally have plenty of warning before their house buckles. So why aren't most houses removed, or at least emptied, before they fall?

Pima County Medical Examiner Greg Hess at his office in Tucson, Ariz. Hess and another Arizona-based medical examiner are rethinking how to catalog and count heat-related deaths, a major step toward understanding the growing impacts of heat.

Here's why an Arizona medical examiner is working to track heat-related deaths

Alejandra Borunda

No one across the U.S. is consistently tracking climate-fueled deaths. One medical examiner has a new protocol on heat-deaths.

New SpaceX site in Louisiana concerns some residents

Drew Hawkins

Residents in Louisiana near SpaceX's next launch site are concerned about the project's impact on the environment and say they were kept in dark about the deal.

In Florida, textbook publishers are minimizing or removing climate change coverage

Jessica Meszaros

The words "climate change" are slowly being removed from textbooks in Florida and from the state's education standards.

Antarctic krill, a shrimp-like crustacean that holds up the food web at the South Pole, were found at a hydrothermal vent off the Antarctic Peninsula during the National Geographic and Rolex Perpetual Planet Southern Ocean Expedition in collaboration with the Schmidt Ocean Institute.

Tiny krill are turning up in deep-sea hydrothermal vents. Scientists want to know why

Ari Daniel

Antarctic krill serve as a crucial food source for penguins, seals, and whales. They recycle nutrients used by algae. Now researchers say they've found krill in a surprising place: hydrothermal vents.

EPA eliminates rule limiting greenhouse gas emissions from power plants. Will it change anything?

The agency says repealing rules that limit climate-warming gasses will free up more than $300 billion in costs for the industry and help “unleash” American energy. B