Climate

There isn’t a specific path for the state’s vision of zeroing out carbon emissions by 2050 and ensuring areas overburdened by past pollution fully benefit from the growing green economy.

Teenagers and young adults have experienced record-breaking temperatures for much of their lives. Frustrated with the slow pace of progress among their parents’ generation, some young Missourians are taking action in their communities.

Some farmers in Missouri and Illinois are planting trees and cover crops to keep climate-warming carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere.

Some farmers and environmentalists say the federal program, which is heavily subsidized by U.S. taxpayers, discourages growers from adapting to climate change and should be redesigned.

In Missouri, winters are about 4 degrees hotter on average than in 1970 — and farmers are starting to feel the effects.

Nearly half of the world’s plant species are at risk of extinction. New research from the Missouri Botanical Garden aims to better predict which species can be grown outdoors in St. Louis.

The climate pattern known as La Niña generally brings winters that are drier and warmer than usual across the southern U.S. and cooler and wetter in the northern part of the country.

Missouri has experienced some of the warmest and wettest years on record in recent decades, said Pat Guinan, state climatologist and associate professor of climatology at the University of Missouri Extension.

Found in wetlands from Missouri to Massachusetts, the bacteria could be absorbing carbon dioxide on a large scale, underscoring the importance of conserving these threatened habitats, Washington University scientists say.

In recent decades, climate change has shifted when Missouri wildflowers bloom. Once-forgotten data found in the archives of the Missouri Botanical Garden have become a springboard for St. Louis scientists studying how climate change may affect the survival of native plants in the future.