Climate Cast: Daily Summaries Delivered

Three Tribes, Three Forests: Protecting the kauri from fire and disease

In Minnesota, red pines reach high into the sky at 150-plus feet. There are even local scavenger hunts looking for a jumbo tree of each species. In South America, the Mapuche people are in awe of the monkey puzzle tree for both its size and life-giving seeds. And for Southeast Asia, the strangler fig sits as a temple guard. But these mammoth trees, revered in cultures across the world, are all under threat from wildfires.New Zealand’s own canopy king is the kauri tree. Last year, a wildfire in the coastal Waipoua grove burned many of the sacred trees. The kauri is New Zealand’s answer to the giant sequoia. The largest of the bunch, Tāne Mahuta or “God of the Forest,” survived this round. But conservationists are concerned more fire will come.“This fire wasn’t a one-off, it was a warning,” said Snow Tane, general manager of Te Roroa Group, the tribal team tasked with preserving the kauri in Northland, New Zealand. “We don’t see ourselves as owning this forest. We see ourselves as related to it.”The Waipoua Fire charred 223 acres between February and March 2025. Starting with an out-of-control trash burn, the blaze required 100 firefighters, eight helicopters and many pieces of heavy equipment to save homes and the protected trees. ​​“It's not just a tree, it’s an ancestor, Tane said. “When a kauri is harmed, it’s not just environmental damage, it’s a spiritual wound.”Kauri trees are the apex trees of the Northland temperate rainforests. They are the true crown of the “Crown Lands,” which are federally protected spaces in New Zealand. These trees now occupy less than a tenth of their former habitat. Logging, ranching and plant disease like kauri dieback are all responsible for the decline over the last 100 years.Dieback is a microscopic pathogen that starves the vascular system of the giant trees; once the disease reaches a new tree, it’s a slow death with no cure. Not only does the fungus-like pathogen kill centuries-old trees; it also dries out the canopy, further adding to wildfire risk in Northland. The disease is often spread by invasive pests like stoats and possums. The same is true in northern Minnesota, where spruce budworm underwent its largest outbreak since 1961. The pest leaves behind dry and brittle trees, and we saw the impact during the “July Lightning Incident” fires during the summer of 2026. All told, those Minnesota fires charred nearly 70,000 acres across the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness.In New Zealand’s Opua grove, female-led volunteer groups like Bay Bush Action and Project Island Song have stepped in, helping remove pests with baited traps. Abby O’Neill and Fleur Corbett led these teams through the nearby Opua Forest, marking predator traps in the temperate rainforest. Their goal is to prevent, and even reverse, the spread of kauri dieback. They also hope to bring back native New Zealand songbirds, who also face die-offs from the pests.“It’s really calming. Especially after we come up a really steep part of the track. And we come up to the ridgeline to sit,” O’Neill said. “We were so happy and relieved that we’d made it to the top again. It was nice to just ‘be.’”Wildfires are nothing new in temperate rainforests across the globe. Many plants rely on fires to clean the underbrush, spur germination or activate soil nutrients. Throughout history, many native cultures formed a symbiosis with nature by lightly using prescribed fires.“Fire was a tool for maintaining balance,” Tane said. “Reducing fuel in open areas, encouraging certain food plants, and protecting communities. It was never about creating land at scale.”Before Europeans arrived and began large-scale burns to carve grazing lands from dense forests, some research shows that Māori had a much gentler touch with controlled burns.“The Maori used fire as their principal tool. It was used to burn paths through densely vegetated terrain and to clear land for cultivation and to live on. Fire was used in the felling of trees to make waka (canoes) and to help with bending wood for weapons and shaping bark vessels. It was also important for the propagation and storage of crops, and for cooking in earth ovens,” a report by the International Association of Wildland Fire found.A report from the prestigious Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences casts some doubt on this theory, however. A 2020 peer-reviewed paper by Montana State scientists found: “Charcoal recovered from lake-bed sediment cores show that just a few large fires within 20

Solar projects on closed landfills offer new use for former Minnesota waste sites

Minnesota has more than 100 closed landfills, but there is an approach to deal with the waste sites that also brings the state closer to energy independence. It involves repurposing these landfills into solar farms. The Anoka-Ramsey landfill has now been covered with nearly 9,000 solar panels that help power 750 nearby homes. MPR Chief Meteorologist Ben Cathey spoke with the CEO of Connexus Energy, Brian Burandt, and Hans Neve, a program manager with the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency, about how closed landfills can be transformed and what benefits they can bring to a community.“Up front, people often say, ‘I don't want to live by solar,’” Burandt said. “Then after the system goes up, we've seen housing development go all around it. And when the University of Minnesota came out and did some study and talked to those homeowners, they were happy to live by it. They now know what their neighbor is for the next 30 years. It's something that's silent. There's pollinator habitat and people tend to be happy to be living adjacent to a solar system.”Click play on the audio player above to listen to this episode or subscribe to the Climate Cast podcast.Correction (Oct. 27, 2026): A previous version of this story misspelled Connexus Energy and Brian Burandt. It has been updated.

How a Minnesota wild prairie helps fight climate change

Sitting in the driver’s seat of an antique combine east of Moorhead, Sam Stueber can see the past, present and future of Minnesota’s changing environment.On this day, she’s working in a field of ancient and unspoiled prairie in Clay County, rounding up thousands of pounds of wild grass and wildflower seeds at the Nature Conservancy’s Bluestem Prairie Scientific and Natural Area. It’s one of the few places left where you can see the sweeping native prairie that once covered much of western Minnesota.Beyond their beauty, these lands are helping in the larger fight against climate change. Grasslands are one of the world’s best places to store carbon. University of Minnesota researchers found an acre of prairie grassland can pull a ton of carbon out of the air each year.The roots of wild prairie grasses can extend 15 feet down into the dirt, trapping the carbon underground. If a wildfire comes along, grasses will burn and some carbon will escape but most of the carbon stays underground.The Nature Conservancy along with other nonprofits and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service collects about 15,000 pounds of wild grass seed each fall using special Allis-Chalmers combines, which are lighter than modern combines that can rut the sandy soil.Keeping the ancient prairie healthy and growing into the future is vital. As we humans continue to dump carbon into the atmosphere, trapping carbon is crucial to the future of our warming planet.Click the play button above to listen to the full podcast.

Climate change is delaying Minnesota’s peak fall colors

The colors of fall foliage are important to many Minnesotans, and timing for peak colors is wrapping up in the northern portion of the state. But future generations may get to enjoy those vibrant colors later in the year. MPR Chief Meteorologist Ben Cathey spoke with Brian Schwingle, forest health program coordinator with the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources, to see how climate change is delaying when leaves change.“Peak color since the late ’60s up until 2025 has delayed about almost two weeks,” Schwingle said. “There are two main factors that control leaf color change: day length ... and temperature in the fall. Temperature, specifically minimum night temperatures in September and October.”The delayed timing doesn't necessarily mean Minnesota's fall color season will become shorter. But as autumn temperatures continue to warm, the state's annual display is likely to keep arriving later in the year.Click play on the audio player above to listen to this episode or subscribe to the Climate Cast podcast.

Climate Cast: Heat and humidity create havoc for local wines

Climate change is reshaping marathon season in Minnesota

Runners can expect seasonably cool temperatures for the 2026 Twin Cities Marathon. But the early October tradition will be moving back a week starting next year. Race officials have stated health concerns due to heat as a reason for the change. Between 1961 and 1990, October temperatures never touched 90 degrees in the Twin Cities. But, since 2010, there has been two instances of 90-degree temperatures in October. And now it’s twice as likely to hit temperatures over 80 degrees than 50 years ago.MPR News meteorologist Sven Sundgaard spoke with distance runner Jeff Denney and Jacob Kastner, the medical co-director of the Twin Cities Marathon, about how a changing climate is impacting long distance runners. Click play on the audio player above to listen to this episode or subscribe to the Climate Cast podcast.

How climate is changing the apples you buy

The University of Minnesota is recognized as one of the top apple breeding and genetics research programs in the country. It developed the Honeycrisp apple and other flavors like the Big Flirt and the SuperSnap. But a warming climate makes the university’s work more difficult.MPR News chief meteorologist Ben Cathey spoke with Matt Clark, the director of research at the Minnesota Landscape Arboretum, and Sarah Kostick, a member of the University of Minnesota Apple Breeding Program, about how climate is changing apples and the way you buy them.Click play on the audio player above to listen to this episode or subscribe to the Climate Cast podcast.

Climate Cast: As ships sit in Strait of Hormuz, invasive species hitch a ride

Invasive species play the long game. They travel well, dig in to survive wherever they’re dropped off and then start multiplying, making it nearly impossible to root them out.Scientists looking now at the current state of the Strait of Hormuz see a recipe for invasive species spread. Giant ships are stuck in the warm waters there amid the Iran War and they’re collecting critters in the ballast water and on their hulls.Those invasive creatures will end up in ports around the world once the ships start moving again, likely creating a global superspreader event, Mario Tamburri, a marine ecologist with the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science, told MPR News.“What makes a good invasive species is one that's sort of very tolerant to extremes and robust, and that's why the the organisms we have in the Persian, Arabian Gulf are particularly concerning because they they live in really hot water, really salty conditions,” he said. “That might make them more invasive, more able to to withstand new conditions,” he added, “but what it also means is that they can bring those traits of being tolerant to higher temperature to the new environments.”In the case of freshwater Lake Superior, it would take a longer time to see impacts from the Strait of Hormuz. Many of the big boats on Superior travel domestically, but don’t head out into saltwater. Plus, the Strait of Hormuz is much warmer than the Duluth harbor. Lake Superior has seen invasives take hold, including lampreys and zebra mussels.The bloody red shrimp is the latest local example. Twenty years after reaching the Great Lakes in the ballast water of cargo ships, the crustacean native to Europe and Asia has now colonized Lake Superior, despite years of effort by ecologists to keep it away from Duluth. That pattern is unlikely to change anytime soon. New research from scientists at Toronto’s York University found Lake Superior is one of the fastest-warming big lakes in the world. Research led by a biologist at the State University of New York-New Paltz found Lake Superior has lost more than two months of ice coverage per year since 1857.And when there’s less ice coverage in winter, we also see faster winter warming on land, perpetuating the cycle a University of Minnesota research team found.Creatures living in the saline waters off the coast of Iran are incredibly resilient to climate change and able to survive in extremely tough conditions, and that could keep them alive in places like the Great Lakes one day, Tamburri said.Click play on the audio player above to listen to this episode or subscribe on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.