Nicole Mortillaro
Nicole Mortillaro is a senior science reporter at CBC News who connects climate change, extreme weather and broader scientific research to the lives of people and the natural world. Her work focuses on clear, accessible explanations of complex climate systems, often grounding global trends in concrete impacts on ecosystems, communities and daily decisions. Alongside climate and environment, she maintains a strong space and astronomy strand, reflecting a long-standing interest in the night sky and planetary science.
Climate change and its cascading impacts
Mortillaro’s climate coverage concentrates on what scientific findings mean on the ground, rather than on abstract projections. She has reported on major assessments of climate risk, including detailed pieces on what recent IPCC reports say about how warming is expected to affect Canada in the coming decades.
In these stories she draws out regional consequences, from temperature and precipitation changes to shifts in extreme events, translating technical language into direct, practical terms.
She regularly covers how climate change disrupts the natural world, such as reporting on how earlier springs driven by warming temperatures can wreak havoc on animal behaviour and ecosystems. These pieces link phenological changes - the timing of seasonal events - with food availability, migration patterns and survival, showing how modest shifts in temperature cascade through entire systems.
Her reporting also examines geopolitical and humanitarian dimensions, including whether Canada could function as a safe haven for people displaced by climate impacts, and how existing refugee frameworks handle climate-driven migration.
Mortillaro writes analytical work on climate-related health risks, such as an analysis of how many people die from heat-related illnesses and why the true toll is hard to measure.
In that piece she explores gaps in data, attribution challenges and systemic undercounting, placing scientific studies alongside public-health reporting and policy questions. She also covers attribution studies that quantify the role of human-caused climate change in specific disasters, including research showing that warming made recent wildfires in parts of Canada significantly more likely. Across these stories, the through-line is a focus on evidence, clear explanation of scientific methods and the consequences of warming for people, wildlife and infrastructure.
Extreme weather, El Niño and shifting oceans
Mortillaro devotes substantial attention to extreme weather, treating heat waves, hurricanes and atmospheric patterns as expressions of underlying climate systems rather than isolated events. She has written on Atlantic hurricane seasons, including a recent piece asking why, near the end of September, there have been so few hurricanes despite a traditionally active period. That coverage blends forecast data, long-term climatology and ocean conditions to explain how factors like wind shear and sea-surface temperatures shape storm formation.
Her reporting on El Niño shows the same explanatory style, as in a feature on the current El Niño event and how it could become “mind-blowing” in its impacts. In that story she connects the Pacific warming pattern to potential changes in global temperatures, precipitation, storm tracks and regional extremes, emphasizing implications for heat, drought and flooding. She extends this systems view to ocean circulation, appearing as a CBC science reporter to explain a radical proposal to build a dam across the Bering Strait to stabilize a slowing ocean current that helps regulate the planet’s climate.
In that segment she walks through what is happening to the circulation, why scientists are concerned, and what a slowdown could mean for sea levels, weather patterns and where people can live.
Her broader career profile notes a particular interest in severe weather, and her beat has long included storms, environment and weather alongside climate science. This shows up in repeated coverage where she treats events like wildfires, heat waves and quiet hurricane seasons as opportunities to explain atmospheric dynamics and the influence of greenhouse gases. The emphasis is on why the atmosphere behaves as it does, and what current science says about future extremes.
Human choices, high-emissions lifestyles and environmental policy
Mortillaro often links climate systems to everyday choices and high-emissions lifestyles, highlighting how individual decisions fit within larger patterns of responsibility. In one feature, she examines what the private flights of the wealthiest one per cent are doing to the planet, combining emissions estimates with discussions of fairness, regulation and the outsized impact of luxury travel on climate targets.
Her environmental newsletter contributions, under the CBC What on Earth banner, similarly explore lived experiences and policy debates, such as sharing what she learned while shopping for a used electric vehicle.
That newsletter issue also touches on wildlife management and political trajectories, checking what science and government policy say about relocating nuisance bears instead of killing them, and catching up with a former environment minister embarking on a new chapter.
These pieces show her interest in how research, regulation and personal decisions intersect, whether in consumer technology, wildlife policy or political leadership. Across this strand of her work, she positions climate change not only as a scientific problem but as a question of systems, incentives and behaviour.
Space, astronomy and the wider science beat
Although environment and climate are core to her coverage, Mortillaro’s beat spans “all things science” at CBC News and includes a strong astronomy focus. She describes herself as a science reporter who primarily writes about space, astronomy and climate change, and her role is framed as a senior science reporter covering a wide range of scientific topics. As an amateur astronomer, she spends time looking up at the night sky, and she serves as editor of the Journal of the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada. She has authored several books, adding long-form science storytelling to her daily reporting.
Her broader profile includes an international science journalism award she received in 2021 for an audio special examining the history and future of Black people in science and medicine, reflecting a willingness to tackle issues of equity and discrimination within scientific institutions. Earlier in her career she covered science, environment and weather at another major broadcaster before moving to the CBC, a path that reinforces her long-standing focus on these subjects.
Together, her astronomy work, climate reporting and attention to social dimensions of science mark her as a reporter who treats environment stories as part of a larger scientific and societal picture.
4 more environment journalists.
Adam Kovac
Adam Kovac is a breaking news reporter at Scientific American who explains fast-moving stories where science, climate and public policy intersect. His beat spans climate-driven extremes, El Niño, energy, infrastructure, space, mathematics and public health. He has written about super El Niño, extreme weather, ozone recovery, diesel prices, electric rain, peeling paint, wine chemistry, lunar craters, space missions, NASA telescopes, vaccines, IVF treatments, TikTok remedies and AI-created viruses. He also covers regulation, political campaigns and pressures on scientific institutions. His stories are fast-turn news features and explainers. He uses expert quotes and clear descriptions of underlying mechanisms to show why developments matter. He connects technical details to practical stakes, including risks to ecosystems, economies, patients, public safety, technology and long-term scientific work.
Angela Capobianco
Angela Capobianco stands out for reporting how policy, infrastructure and environmental decisions translate into concrete effects for workers, residents and vulnerable communities. She is a digital broadcast journalist at Global News and works as a general assignment video journalist with a focus on environmental reporting, municipal affairs, housing and labour. Her stories cover labour protections, municipal governance, environmental conflicts and social policy. She reports on how land use, climate and regulatory choices affect communities, from glyphosate spraying fears in Bear River to extreme heat and support for people sleeping rough. She also covers workers’ rights, long-term care strikes, municipal budgets, ferry service delays, heritage designation, housing reuse, and bridge replacement plans, with close attention to negotiations, official decisions and on-the-ground impact.
Arrthy Thayaparan
Arrthy Thayaparan is a CBC News reporter who shows how government decisions affect daily life. She covers climate, transportation, education, community issues, trade, tariffs and the cost of living. Her reporting examines how policy changes affect prices, public services, employers, workers, consumers and families. She has written about Ontario businesses facing tariff pressures, ticket resale rules, tariff support funding, transit changes after the Scarborough RT derailment, highway speed limits, education union talks and mandatory school platforms. She also covers public-service work rules, community-service funding, municipal campaigns, tenant protections and the economic effects of major events. Thayaparan reports through concrete numbers, program details and timelines. She gives space to governments, unions, workers, businesses and residents, and traces decisions from political debate to their effects on commutes, classrooms, budgets, workplaces and neighbourhoods.
Bianca McKeown
Bianca McKeown stands out for reporting the everyday consequences of climate change, infrastructure decisions, social policy and Indigenous governance in northern communities. She reports for CBC North across television, radio and digital. Her work focuses on how weather shifts, wildlife changes and development projects affect daily life, travel, safety and local economies. She covers large infrastructure and energy proposals, foster parent payments, cost of living, vulnerable families and Indigenous leadership. She also reports on national reconciliation efforts and the role of Inuit voices in decision-making. Her stories rely on practical details, community voices, interviews and clear descriptions of what residents, officials and advocates face on the ground. Her coverage is direct and descriptive, and it connects policy decisions to lived reality.