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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Polar bears continue to take a hit in regions with the greatest loss of snow and ice, the latest report card on the Arctic shows. Meanwhile, plankton are thriving as the sea heats up. -
Americans eat more seafood than just about anyone, but a big portion of imports are caught illegally. One expert calls this "the single greatest threat to sustainable fisheries in the world today." -
Faulty gear and attempts to clear liquid from wells can release enough gas to power hundreds of homes, new research reveals. Scientists say finding the leaks is a first step to plugging them.
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Unlike the 1997 Kyoto treaty, the plan on the negotiating table in Lima this week asks every country, developed and developing, to limit carbon emissions. Each nation would set its own target. -
Birds are one of the most widely studied forms of life on the planet. And, there are still new species out there to discover — as one young researcher found recently in a forest in Indonesia.
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Experts who've parsed the numbers offered by the two countries say it's not enough to keep climate from overheating seriously. It is seen as a benchmark by which governments can be held accountable.
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Scientists say a new deal between the U.S. and China on greenhouse gases is a positive move toward new models for controlling emissions, but that it won't keep the Earth from dangerous levels of warming.
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Discovered in Montana in 1988, the Wankel T. Rex is a prize find — a nearly complete skeleton, now bound for display at the Smithsonian, in Washington, D.C. But first, those old bones need some work. -
In Copenhagen on Sunday, scientists gathered to issue their latest assessment of the world's climate. Their report is considered the most comprehensive overview of the state of climate science.
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NPR's Christopher Joyce and audio engineer Bill McQuay travel to an abandoned copper mine in search of bats — and their sound.
