Climate change for preschoolers: A TV show explores unmapped ground
There are almost no books, TV shows or other tools to help parents and teachers talk to preschoolers about climate change. “Octonauts: Above and Beyond” is one of the first to try.

Four-year-old Francis Gaskin, who lives with his family in Houston, has a favorite episode of his favorite new Netflix cartoon: When the Amazon rainforest canopy dries up from too much heat, the manic howler monkeys must move into the lower realms of the forest, creating havoc among the other rainforest residents. “They had to find a new home,” Francis explained during a video interview.
“I noticed something else,” the preschooler added. “The frogs were going to lay their eggs in the water, but there was no water in the stream because there was zero rain.”
“Sometimes the Earth warms up,” he said.
Francis’ favorite show is “Octonauts: Above and Beyond,” the recent spinoff of a long-running BBC program, and one of the first television shows directed at very young children to explicitly address climate change. The program attempts to strike a delicate balance: gently showing three- and four-year-olds that their world is already changing, without frightening them with the consequences.
Continue reading on The New York Times.
The climate future is now. Humans navigate a ‘Perilous Course’ on the East Coast.

After murky water from the Mamaroneck River gutted the sanctuary, the rotting pews in First Baptist Church sat empty for months.
When the faithful returned, they wore whatever remained of their Sunday best. A blush pink blazer. A dress shirt buttoned tight around an Adam’s apple. Ladies white gloves.
Some parishioners were still displaced from their apartments and houses, lives scattered across hotel rooms, shelters, friends’ couches.
Continue reading on MSN.

Dr. Max Homes, President and CEO of Woodwell Climate Research Center, highlights our work over the last year and gives you a sneak peek of what we have going on this fall. Thank you for being part of the Woodwell Climate team and supporting our work!
Northeast drought endangers Massachusetts’ cranberry harvest
Another year of erratic weather means cranberry farmers are facing slim margins and tough decisions.

Peter Hanlon, a 68-year-old farmer from Boston, has been growing cranberries in Cape Cod, Massachusetts, for decades. Cranberries are in Hanlon’s blood — his grandfather farmed them on the cape before him. But six weeks ago, Hanlon sold his farm in the town of Sandwich. None of his kids wanted to carry on the tradition, and Hanlon doesn’t blame them: Profit margins are incredibly tight, and increasingly erratic weather patterns in recent years have made cranberries more difficult to grow.
The ancient subarctic forests at risk from climate change and war
The boreal ecosystem that covers swaths of Russia and North America is nearing a dangerous tipping point

In summer 2019, the Cambridge physicist Gareth Rees flew into Yakutsk to meet a team of Russian scientists. The far eastern Siberian port is known as the coldest city on Earth, but that year it was simmering under a heatwave. Together the researchers drove deep into the region’s sprawling forests on a road paved by gulag prisoners.
The British and Russian scientists were on a mission to study how the boreal forests of the subarctic region are transforming with climate change. Together they measured 2,000 trees, sweating under the heavy clothes protecting them from crowds of insects.
Read more on Financial Times.