Early Signs wins Polk Award

The George Polk Award for radio reporting will honor the producers of "Early Signs: Reports from a Warming Planet." From the snowy slopes on Mount Kilimanjaro, the crowded delta of Bangladesh, the outskirts of Auckland, New Zealand, and elsewhere, 11 journalism students conducted interviews and reported on real-life perils already caused by global warming. Distributed in various formats nationwide, the seven-month project was edited and produced by the Graduate School of Journalism at the University of California-Berkeley, American Public Media and Living on Earth. Print stories also appeared on Salon.com and in California Monthly. UC Berkeley NewsCenter covers the award here.

The group, financed by the journalism school and led by veteran investigative reporter Sandy Tolan and UC Berkeley climatologist John Harte of the Energy and Resources Group, received the award designated for radio reporting. Student reporters included Pauline Bartolone, Alexandra Berzon, Kate Cheney Davidson, Durrell Dawson, Jori Lewis, Felicia Mello, Nick Miroff, Jon Mooallem, Emilie Raguso, Aaron Selverston and Sandhya Someshekhar.

"Early Signs" home pages

All of our Salon.com feature stories on climate change live in one place.

The NPR program Living on Earth has a similar page for our radio projects and transcripts.

Early Signs series launch

Early Signs: Reports from a Warming Planet launched today with Jon Mooallem's article about Churchill, Manitoba and Nick Miroff's radio broadcast about the "Polar Bear Capital of the World." Hear it on NPR during Living On Earth.

Read our professor Sandy Tolan's series overview.

Enviro index tool

from kate: This is a pretty cool tool. Choose your country and check out its "environmental vulnerability index" (includes weather and climate).

Disappearing species

from felicia: Fascinating article in the Independent on animal species disappearing due to climate.

Beetles spark wildfires, other warming in Alaska

from Prof. Harte: Anchorage is showing more and more signs of warming: "an explosion of timber-chewing insect populations, record wildfires and shrinking sea ice are among the most obvious and jarring signs that Alaska is getting warmer as the global climate changes, scientists say."

Permafrost takes center stage

The National Snow and Ice Data Center compiles articles and research about chilly topics in the United States.

Eternal question?

From NICK: Mention of climate change is curiously absent from this week-in-review piece in today's NY Times about our latest run of inclement weather. Instead, these new "force of nature" disasters are "ancient and divine," attributable to oscillating weather patterns. I think this question of "are the hurricanes GW-related or not" is on a lot of folks' minds and still unanswered.