Print version by Dan Barkin
Broadcast version by Nadia Ramlagan
Reporting for The Raleigh News & Observer - North Carolina News Service collaboration with the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting

RALEIGH, N.C. -- As journalists around the country turned their attention this year to covering the COVID-19 pandemic and ongoing protests against racism, reporters based in North and South Carolina also teamed up to continue coverage of how climate change is impacting communities.

Adam Wagner, a reporter for the Raleigh News and Observer, and his colleagues spent months reporting on how rising temperatures were affecting North Carolina farmworkers.

He said all communities can learn from stories of climate change.

"I think it's really important to understand how these impacts are already playing out in some of these communities," Wagner explained. "Because, if it's not your community, or if you're not aware of it, there's a pretty good chance that you're going to be aware of it, or see some of these impacts moving forward."

Wagner's work, along with other stories about climate change in the region, made up a six-part series called "Beyond the Beach," published this year by the Raleigh News and Observer.

Sammy Fretwell, an environmental reporter for The State newspaper in Columbia, South Carolina, spent months tracking down why a toxic, flesh-eating bacteria, known as vibrio, killed a crabber in a coastal creek in 2017.

He discovered the warming climate brings more storm surges from the ocean that back up into coastal rivers, bringing the bacteria along.

Fretwell said reporting on climate change is a bit like detective work.

"You need time to do these kinds of stories," Fretwell noted. "They're heavy on science and they're complicated, they're much more complicated than you might think. And it takes quite an effort to fully understand these threats."

He pointed out much of the media attention on climate change has focused on warming oceans, rising sea levels and the impact on beach towns. But he added the effects also are being felt in the small towns and rural counties of the Coastal Plain.

He stressed the work of untangling and explaining these effects is only beginning.

This story was produced with original reporting from Adam Wagner for the Raleigh News & Observer and Sammy Fretwell for the State in Columbia, S.C., with support from the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting.

Read the full story here.

RALEIGH, N.C. -- Massive wildfires in the Western U.S. and Canada have triggered poor air quality in North Carolina over the past few weeks, and health experts say it is important for residents to know traveling smoke can cause more than hazy skies.

Dr. Stephanie Johannes, pediatrician and health programs manager for CleanAIRE NC, said research shows tiny particles can penetrate the lungs and cause a range of health problems.

"We know that when that air from the West Coast shows up here in North Carolina, it's affecting our air quality here," Johannes explained. "And it's really putting people - everybody - at risk for health problems, but especially those people that already have some heart or lung condition, especially people with asthma."

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said wildfire smoke can make people prone to lung infections, including the coronavirus. According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, a warmer and drier climate is expected to lead to more frequent and intense fires and smoke plumes, which in turn are expected to affect more people.

Johannes pointed to research published earlier this year by scientists at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California, San Diego, which found the fine particles in wildfire smoke can cause more harm to human lungs than particulate matter from other sources such as car exhaust.

"There's a lot of data that shows that this particular kind of pollution contributes to symptoms like eye and respiratory-tract infections," Johannes noted. "But also to really severe things, worsening heart and lung conditions that people have and even causing premature death."

She encouraged families with young children, the elderly and those with a chronic disease to regularly check their local air-quality index at airnow.gov. Air-quality indexes use ozone and particle pollution measurements from zero to 300.

"Anything over 100 is unhealthy for people in those sensitive groups," Johannes advised. "And anything over 150 is something that's risky, really, for everybody."

Johannes recommended planning outdoor activities or exercising on lower air-pollution days, and said it is important to talk to your doctor or child's pediatrician about air-quality concerns.

HARRISBURG, Pa. - U.S. Sen. Bob Casey, D-Pa., wants to bring back the Civilian Conservation Corps, a public-works program from the 1930s that created 3 million jobs nationally, planting trees and creating trails and cabins in national parks.

The Revive the CCC Act, introduced last week by Casey, would focus on jobs to mitigate climate change and address racial justice. Unlike the original CCC, the proposal also would include farms as job host sites.

Hannah Smith-Brubaker, executive director of Pasa Sustainable Agriculture, said this on-site support could help farmers deal with flooding and erosion.

"Having help to install some of these conservation practices means a lot, because we know that the margin for farmers is really tight," she said, "and so it's sort of a win-win situation; we've got the help on the farms, but then also the ability to pass on this important information."

This isn't the first time a revival of the CCC has been suggested in Congress, and some budget pushback is expected. Under this bill, the jobs would pay at least $15 an hour and could create 57,000 jobs in Pennsylvania, according to a study by the University of Massachusetts-Amherst's Political Economy Research Institute.

A Civilian Conservation Corps also could be helpful in rebuilding an economy hit hard by the pandemic. Pennsylvania's labor market is short more than 400,000 jobs compared with February 2020 employment numbers.

Stephen Herzenberg, executive director of the Keystone Research Center, said he thinks a new CCC could be a national opportunity for life-sustaining and meaningful jobs.

"These are really important jobs; people would be on the front lines of climate response," he said. "If we get a CCC, I can guarantee you that you're going to have members of Congress from both parties that are going to be doing 'show-and-tells' in their districts where the good work of the CCC is going on again."

Casey's legislation also supports pathways to employment in climate, conservation and related trades for formerly incarcerated people. Similar legislation has been introduced in the U.S. House by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y.

HOUSTON - Cities in the southern United States, especially large urban communities along the coasts, are facing extreme heat attributable to climate change, and a study is under way to find ways to cool them.

Funded by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the two-year project includes the Houston Advanced Research Center and the Desert Research Institute.

According to DRI associate research professor John Mejia, the greater Houston area will serve as a testbed for development of a modeling framework to better project what will occur when heat waves become even more frequent.

"Houston is a very warm, soggy city," he said, "so the summertimes are very hard when combined with heat waves."

Houston is the fourth-largest city in the United States, and extreme heat waves leave its residents susceptible to the dangers of heat stress, heat stroke and higher ozone levels, limiting their overall quality of life. Mejia said more needs to be done if Houston is going to remain pleasant and safe.

Houston adopted a Climate Adaptation Plan in 2020 with a goal to "reduce greenhouse gas emissions, meet the Paris Agreement goal of carbon neutrality by 2050, and lead the global energy transition." Mejia said other cities are implementing new codes, policies and programs to incentivize heat-resilient development. Addressing "urban heat islands" needs to be a priority in Houston," he said.

"They also have cooling scenarios, such as 'greening' of the city by planting trees, rooftop green infrastructure," he said. "Those tend to have a cooling effect."

Researchers hope that what they learn in the greater Houston area can be applied to other cities influenced by large water bodies, both in the nation and worldwide. The data will be compiled in a report, to be released in the summer of 2023.