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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Capuchin monkeys in Brazil have been seen making sharp stone flakes. It was previously thought that only humans and their ancestors had flaking skills. -
New research reveals that the amount of methane from oil and gas operations is much larger than previously thought. But the recent uptick in methane emissions seems to be from agriculture.
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Nearly 200 nations agreed last December to the most ambitious deal to slow climate change ever. It looks very likely that the requisite number of countries will actually ratify the deal this week to make it official. That will set in motion the difficult process of making sure both rich and poor countries deliver on their promises to cut emissions of greenhouse gases.
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Flood managers suspect August's big rainstorms and floods in Louisiana are becoming more common there and elsewhere because of climate change. One clue: Much of the damage was beyond the flood plain. -
July 2016 was Earth's hottest month on record. And Arctic ice has shrunk this year almost as much as it did in 2012 — the most severe melt to date. -
Camp Century was a research station and test site for deploying nuclear missiles before it was abandoned under the ice in the '60s. Scientists say pollutants left behind may spread as the ice melts. -
For example, June's average was up 1.62 F. A couple of degrees may not sound like much, but it's persistent warming over decades that alters the atmosphere, the oceans, and most everything else. -
The National Park Service is racing to record soundscapes of each park that capture nature for the ear. "If we start to lose sounds of wilderness, we start to lose a piece of us," one scientist says.
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A nearly complete fossilized skull from Argentina helps explains the success of these giant dinosaurs that roamed some 95 million years ago. -
More than 100 nations will sign the climate change deal agreed to in December. It will eventually commit nealy all the world's governments to cut back on greenhouse gases that cause global warming.
