Christopher Joyce
Christopher Joyce is a correspondent on the science desk at NPR. His stories can be heard on all of NPR's news programs, including NPR's Morning Edition, All Things Considered, and Weekend Edition.
Joyce seeks out stories in some of the world's most inaccessible places. He has reported from remote villages in the Amazon and Central American rainforests, Tibetan outposts in the mountains of western China, and the bottom of an abandoned copper mine in Michigan's Upper Peninsula. Over the course of his career, Joyce has written stories about volcanoes, hurricanes, human evolution, tagging giant blue-fin tuna, climate change, wars in Kosovo and Iraq, and the artificial insemination of an African elephant.
For several years, Joyce was an editor and correspondent for NPR's Radio Expeditions, a documentary program on natural history and disappearing cultures produced in collaboration with the National Geographic Society that was heard frequently on Morning Edition.
Joyce came to NPR in 1993 as a part-time editor while finishing a book about tropical rainforests and, as he says, "I just fell in love with radio." For two years, Joyce worked on NPR's national desk and was responsible for NPR's Western coverage. But his interest in science and technology soon launched him into parallel work on NPR's science desk.
In addition, Joyce has written two non-fiction books on scientific topics for the popular market: Witnesses from the Grave: The Stories Bones Tell (with co-author Eric Stover); and Earthly Goods: Medicine-Hunting in the Rainforest.
Before coming to NPR, Joyce worked for ten years as the U.S. correspondent and editor for the British weekly magazine New Scientist.
Joyce's stories on forensic investigations into the massacres in Kosovo and Bosnia were part of NPR's war coverage that won a 1999 Overseas Press Club award. He was part of the Radio Expeditions reporting and editing team that won the 2001 Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University journalism award and the 2001 Sigma Delta Chi award from the Society of Professional Journalists. Joyce won the 2001 American Association for the Advancement of Science excellence in journalism award as well as the 2016 Communication Award from the National Academies of Sciences.
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Every year, 8 million tons of plastic wash into the oceans. The biggest sources are in Asia. In the Philippines, one man is going head-to-head with multinational corporations to stop the plastic tide. -
2018 saw a string of more precise — and dire — assessments that a warming climate is affecting the weather. That didn't keep President Trump and others from questioning those scientific conclusions. -
A seemingly harmless insect has invaded an island in the Antarctic and, being non-native, is eating up the peat moss and changing the environment. The midges could also infest the Antarctic mainland.
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The fortuitous dip in emissions of the main greenhouse gas, carbon dioxide, during the past three years is over, as economies turn up. The trend in the near future looks grim, say climate scientists. -
Dry weather and strong winds mean that what would have been small blazes in the past are now monster fires. And more people live in harm's way.
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Florence is wetter, wider — and maybe slower, due to climate change, according to new research. And flood insurance isn't keeping up with how climate change is altering hurricanes.
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A discovery of the remains of two infants in central Alaska provides evidence of the earliest wave of people to move from Asia into the Americas. -
With the help of federal flood insurance, many homeowners will rebuild after disasters. Some properties already have flooded many times. It'd be cheaper to buy owners out, but that's not happening.
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President Trump pledged to rebuild Houston and Texas bigger and better than ever. However, he has also proposed eliminating federal flood mapping and the federal government's top disaster agency.
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A comprehensive government report on climate change has leaked to the public. The report clearly states that humans are changing the climate, and the consequences could be serious. Those views are at odds with statements by many in the Trump administration.
