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In a webinar on April 19, we'll explore how climate organizations are currently using storytelling in their work, the impacts of these stories, and lessons learned from other movements.

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Yale Climate Connections

During an extreme weather disaster, your home could suffer costly damage and your place of work could close for weeks or months.

There’s no way to make it easy, but you can take steps now to make your financial recovery smoother.

Before extreme weather is in the forecast, make sure your insurance coverage is up to date. And take photos of the rooms in your house so you can more easily make claims for items that are damaged or destroyed.

It’s a good idea to print out information about bank accounts, bills, and loans, so you can make payments and communicate with lenders. Store these records where you can access them quickly.

If possible, ...

In a webinar on April 19, we'll explore how climate organizations are currently using storytelling in their work, the impacts of these stories, and lessons learned from other movements.

Stay in the know about climate impacts and solutions. Subscribe to our weekly newsletter.

Yale Climate Connections

Many people are replacing their old, fossil-fuel-powered furnaces and gas stoves with new electric heat pumps and induction stoves.

But some hit a snag when they find out that their home’s electrical panel, or breaker box, cannot handle all the extra electricity they’ll need.

Fowler: “That’s when you realize, oh, I need a little more juice.”

Eric Fowler is with the nonprofit Fresh Energy, which advocates for clean energy in Minnesota.

Fowler: “We want folks to be able to have the option to even consider those electric alternatives. But you can’t do that if you’re already hitting up against the maximum amount of electricity that your ...

In a webinar on April 19, we'll explore how climate organizations are currently using storytelling in their work, the impacts of these stories, and lessons learned from other movements.

Stay in the know about climate impacts and solutions. Subscribe to our weekly newsletter.

Yale Climate Connections

For decades, the clammers of coastal Maine have woken up, put on their boots, and waded into the cold waters of the Atlantic to dig for soft-shell clams.

Clamming requires no special equipment, so it’s allowed generations of Mainers to work in the fishing industry without investing in expensive boats or gear.

Randall: “You use the strength of your own body to make a living.”

But Sara Randall, a researcher with the Downeast Institute, says the clammers’ way of life is in trouble.

As the climate changes, temperatures in the Gulf of Maine are rising faster than in most of the world’s oceans. The warmer water allows invasive green crabs to thrive.

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Yale Climate Connections

For decades, the clammers of coastal Maine have woken up, put on their boots, and waded into the cold waters of the Atlantic to dig for soft-shell clams.

Clamming requires no special equipment, so it’s allowed generations of Mainers to work in the fishing industry without investing in expensive boats or gear.

Randall: “You use the strength of your own body to make a living.”

But Sara Randall, a researcher with the Downeast Institute, says the clammers’ way of life is in trouble.

As the climate changes, temperatures in the Gulf of Maine are rising faster than in most of the world’s oceans. The warmer water allows invasive green crabs to thrive.

The crabs prey on young soft-shell clams, so as the crab population has exploded, the state’s clam harvest has plummeted.

The Downeast Institute has organized a network of ...

Listening in on the insect world gives us a way to monitor how populations of insects are shifting, and so can tell us about the overall health of the environment. The study, published in the Journal of Applied Ecology, suggests that machine and deep learning are becoming the gold standards for automated bioacoustics modeling, and that ecologists and machine-learning experts can fruitfully work together to develop the technology's full potential.

"Insects rule the world," says Laura Figueroa, assistant professor of environmental conservation at UMass Amherst and the paper's senior author. "Some are disease vectors and pests, while others pollinate nutritious crops and cycle nutrients. They're the foundation of ecosystems around the world, being food for animals ranging from birds and fishes to bears and humans. Everywhere we look, there are insects, but it's difficult to get a sense of how their populations are changing."

Indeed, in the age of chemical pesticides, ...

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Yale Climate Connections

Key deer are found in only one place: the Florida Keys. And they look like something out of a fairytale. The deer are so tiny, they measure only about two feet at the shoulder.

Colangelo: “They are very cute animals, and people love them.”

That’s Nikki Colangelo of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Her agency is working to protect the species.

As seas rise and storms become more extreme, the ocean threatens to swallow much of the deer’s habitat. Already, salt water is moving inland, so it’s harder for the deer to find fresh water.

To help, the agency is improving habitat in places on higher ground that are more protected from sea level rise.

It’s working with the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission to restore a large freshwater marsh system in Big Pine Key.

Colangelo: “It’s one of the higher ...

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Yale Climate Connections

When the power goes out on a cold winter night, some people head to a hotel. Others huddle around a fireplace bundled up in hats and blankets.

But after a blizzard knocked out the power at Katrin Klingenberg’s home in Illinois, her house stayed warm and comfortable.

Klingenberg: “I was sitting in my living room in a T-shirt, and outside it was negative 40 windchill. And that’s kind of cool.”

She lives in a so-called passive house she designed herself. And she’s co-founder of Passive House Institute U.S., a nonprofit that works to increase the adoption of passive house building standards.

It’s an approach that sets a very high bar for energy efficiency, focusing on a building’s envelope. That includes the walls, roof, and windows, which protect against the outdoor elements.

Passive houses are extremely airtight, with ...

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Yale Climate Connections

About 100 miles from Denver, in the flat plains of northeastern Colorado, Nate Northup’s farm gets very little rain.

Northup: “Our annual precipitation is 12 to 15 inches at best.”

He farms thousands of acres with no irrigation, so he needs to choose crops that can tolerate the dry, arid conditions. One of those crops is millet.

Northup: “Millet, for those that don’t know, is just essentially the little white seed that you see in birdseed.”

Plenty of people eat it too. In some parts of the world, millet is a staple ingredient, hulled and cooked into porridge, or ground into flour.

And it’s gaining popularity in the U.S. as a gluten-free substitute for wheat flour or to add crunch to baked goods and bars.

The United Nations named 2023 the International Year of Millets - in part because the grain can thrive in ...

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Yale Climate Connections

In the U.S., Hispanic people are disproportionately exposed to harmful air pollution.

They’re more likely to work outdoors in agriculture or construction, so they may be more exposed to wildfire smoke.

And in many areas, neighborhoods with large Hispanic populations are more likely to be located near highways, or oil and gas plants - sources of pollution that can worsen heart and lung diseases.

Rosas: “When the air quality is not OK, we … want to bring awareness to that so we can make positive change for our communities and for the next generations to come.”

Juan Rosas is with the Hispanic Access Foundation, which recently launched El Aire Que Respiramos, or The Air We Breathe.

It’s an effort to monitor air quality in 12 cities with large Hispanic populations - in California, Texas, Nevada, Idaho, and Illinois.

The ...

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Yale Climate Connections

In the U.S., Hispanic people are disproportionately exposed to harmful air pollution.

They’re more likely to work outdoors in agriculture or construction, so they may be more exposed to wildfire smoke.

And in many areas, neighborhoods with large Hispanic populations are more likely to be located near highways, or oil and gas plants - sources of pollution that can worsen heart and lung diseases.

Rosas: “When the air quality is not OK, we … want to bring awareness to that so we can make positive change for our communities and for the next generations to come.”

Juan Rosas is with the Hispanic Access Foundation, which recently launched El Aire Que Respiramos, or The Air We Breathe.

It’s an effort to monitor air quality in 12 cities with large Hispanic populations - in California, Texas, Nevada, Idaho, and Illinois.

The ...

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Yale Climate Connections

As sea levels rise and storms become more extreme, a growing number of homeowners are struggling with flooding - not just once, but time and time again.

Weber: “People are just faced over and over with damaging floods, and then having to put their lives back together each time.”

Anna Weber is with the nonprofit Natural Resources Defense Council.

An analysis by her group found that as of 2022, almost 45,000 U.S. properties are what the National Flood Insurance Program considers “severe repetitive loss properties,” which means they’ve experienced multiple severe floods.

That’s about a 20% increase from just four years earlier.

And many of these homes are likely to flood again.

Weber: “Concerningly, the number of these properties that have had mitigation actions taken to reduce their risk - for example, homes can be ...

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Yale Climate Connections

After a hurricane, flood, or wildfire, communities face a long process of rebuilding.

But in the immediate aftermath of a disaster, there’s a lot of debris lying around - sometimes more waste than a community would typically produce all year.

Townsend: “You get buildings that are destroyed. You get lots and lots of earth and trees and other debris which now need to be cleaned up and moved somewhere.”

Timothy Townsend is an environmental engineer at the University of Florida.

He says some of this debris can be dangerous.

For example, some of the ash from last year’s Maui fires has high levels of toxic arsenic - likely from volcanic soils, old building materials, and herbicides that were once commonly used on nearby farms.

Townsend: “All of a sudden, you’re faced with not only is this just normal debris that would go ...

If you frequently fly, then you might want to offset your carbon emissions. But what does that even mean, and how do you start? As a frequent flyer herself, Caleigh talks with Candice about the ways you can offset emissions in your personal life and through carbon offset projects.

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Yale Climate Connections

Plastic is used in many products - from containers and bags to electronics and vehicles. And it’s a significant source of climate-warming pollution.

Cabernard: “Plastics production at the moment, it contributes to 4.5% of global greenhouse gas emissions.”

Livia Cabernard of the Technical University in Munich, Germany, explains that almost all plastics are made from oil, natural gas, or coal. Extracting and transporting those fuels emits carbon pollution.

Then, more fossil fuels are burned to supply the heat and electricity used to refine those raw materials and manufacture the plastic products. So the entire process is very carbon-intensive.

Cabernard’s research shows that in the past few decades, carbon pollution from making plastic has doubled because production has grown and shifted to parts of the world that burn a lot of ...

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Yale Climate Connections

When people talk about solar panels, they’re usually referring to solar photovoltaic panels, which convert the sun’s energy to electricity. But solar PV is just one way to harness the power of the sun.

Gasco: “Solar thermal is, I’d say, the simpler and kind of overshadowed little brother almost to solar PV. … I think it’s a really great technology in the simplicity and the efficiency of it.”

Gwe Gasco is with Eighth Fire Solar, an Indigenous-led initiative in Northern Minnesota.

The group manufactures and installs solar thermal panels, which absorb sunlight and convert it to heat.

The heat is transferred to air that’s pumped from inside the home, through the panel, and then back into the home.

Each glass-coated aluminum panel is about as big as a door and gets mounted to a home’s south-facing exterior wall.

Gasco: ...

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Yale Climate Connections

If you drive across Iowa at night, you might encounter a series of coordinated red lights flashing in the sky.

Greenwood: “It looks like a whole bunch of fireflies lighting up at the same time.”

Geoff Greenwood is with MidAmerican Energy, which operates 3,400 wind turbines across the state.

Red lights are placed on top of the turbines to prevent pilots from crashing into the structures, which can be more than 200 feet tall.

But that flashing lights up the night sky, which some people find annoying - so at three of its wind farms, MidAmerican Energy has installed a radar system that scans for nearby planes.

When a low-flying plane is detected within a few miles of the turbines, the warning lights start to flash.

But when the skies are clear, the lights stay off - and Greenwood says that since the system was installed, ...

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Yale Climate Connections

Last summer, wildfires roared across part of Hawaii’s Maui Island. In the town of Lahaina, the fires destroyed more than 2,000 homes and buildings.

Smith-Johnson: “People had to leave all of their belongings and leave literally with the clothes on their back. And as you’re thinking about someone who’s preparing for birth, who just had a child and in their immediate postpartum, or in the throes of postpartum, what does that look like?”

Tanya Smith-Johnson is a certified midwife and the policy director for the Healthy Mothers, Healthy Babies Coalition of Hawaii - a maternal care nonprofit.

Her team sprang into action to help those who were dealing with the fires while also preparing to go into labor or caring for a newborn.

Smith-Johnson: “Life continues to happen, even in a disaster.”

The group shipped their ...

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Yale Climate Connections

Some homeowners wonder if having a wind farm nearby will affect their property values.

A recent study finds that although wind farms can reduce nearby home prices, the drop is usually limited and only temporary.

Hoen: “We hope that this allows people to have greater confidence into what are the likely effects from building a wind project in the future and when those effects are likely to occur.”

That’s Ben Hoen of the Lawrence Berkeley National Lab. He and his colleagues found that, on average, wind farms had no impact on property values in rural areas.

They did find an effect in more populated areas. After a wind farm was announced, the average price of homes within two miles decreased. But they bounced back a few years after construction.

Hoen: “Which seems to say that people are very sensitive to the presence of a wind ...

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Yale Climate Connections

Setting clean energy goals. Pledging to plant billions of trees. Mandating energy efficiency improvements.

Lots of policies can reduce global warming, and it can be hard to know which are the most effective.

So Climate Interactive and the MIT Sloan Sustainability Initiative created a free online simulation tool called En-ROADS.

Overend: “To help people understand what policies are available and what kind of impact that they will have in terms of achieving desired climate goals.”

Michael Overend, a volunteer with the nonprofit Citizens Climate Lobby, leads community workshops using En-ROADS.

Users choose from a menu of climate policies, such as charging carbon polluters a fee or subsidizing EV purchases. And they can tweak variables, like the amount charged on a ton of carbon.

The tool provides instant feedback on how ...

Acoustic recordings of a colony of little auks reveal their nocturnal activities and offer valuable monitoring means for avian biology in the Arctic.

A collaborative study conducted by researchers from the Arctic Research Center at Hokkaido University and the Department of Ecoscience at Aarhus University, Denmark, delves into the captivating activities of the most abundant seabird in the North Atlantic (little auk, Alle alle). The study sheds light on birds' daily rhythmic behavior under the endless daylight of the Arctic summer. Led by Associate Professor Evgeny A. Podolskiy, Hokkaido University, the findings are published in the journal Communications Biology.

In the remote wilderness of Northwest Greenland, the research team employed passive acoustic and imaging technologies to uncover the hidden rhythms of little auk colonies. Every summer, approximately 60 million birds come to this region to breed and forage, and while their vocalization is a familiar summer ...