Climate Science Links
U.S. Government
International
Academic, Non-Governmental
Images of a Changing Planet
The past decade has brought the dangers of climate change into sharp relief, often most clearly through images.
In the Arctic, scientific expeditions this year found increasingly thin ice and surprisingly open seas. Higher up, photographers documented the disappearance of glaciers, including some in the Andes and the Himalayas that provide fresh water to billions of people. On lower lands, drought threatened crops and lives from China to Kenya, Australia to California.
Here’s a look at some of the most worrisome environmental changes through the lenses of scientists, satellites, explorers and humanitarians.
Arctic Sea Ice
Scientists with the National Snow and Ice Data Center grew increasingly concerned this year as satellite images revealed thinner sea ice covering less of the Arctic. While this opens routes to shipping and natural resources, it poses a danger for the region's wildlife and the climate as we know it.
NSIDC's Tom Wagner compares the role of Arctic sea ice to a giant air conditioner. 
The ice reflects sunlight back into space and keeps the region cooler by preventing the dark seawater from absorbing that heat, which in turn keeps ocean systems in balance.
This November, the average extent of Arctic sea ice was 3.96 million square miles, about 405,000 square miles less than the 1979 to 2000 average for Novembers, according to NSIDC. In the past, ice thick enough to survive the summers made up 30 to 40 percent of the Arctic’s sea ice. Now, it makes up about 10 percent; the rest is younger ice that is more prone to melting.
Glaciers
Photographers documented glacial retreat in Europe, South America, North America and Asia. In the Andes, the World Bank warned that the loss of glaciers like Bolivia’s Chacaltaya threaten economic development and basic freshwater supplies. In the Andes region, for example, World Bank researchers noted the glaciers had lost 20 percent of their volume since 1970. 
“Melting glaciers will have serious consequences for Andean cities’ water supply, with 77 million people expected to be under severe water stress by 2020,” World Bank researchers wrote.
- 1
- 2
- 3
- next page »
|
© InsideClimate News |
Adjusting the global economy to Earth's size, make-up & ecology
Dear Friends,
Perhaps necessary change is in the offing. As currently structured, the global economy appears not to be working well and could be fast approaching a point in human history when the manmade "economic colossus" becomes too big not to fail because of its unsustainability in the finite and frangible world we inhabit.
Although many of you appear to be correct in so much of what you report, I have held onto hope for more, much more intellectual honesty, moral courage and bold action from leaders in my not-so-great generation as a way of responding ably to the global challenges that have emerged in my lifetime. Perhaps there is still time available to reasonably acknowledge and sensibly address the converging global challenges that loom before humanity now. At least one of these ominous global challenges, the human overpopulation of Earth, is clearly visible for all to see if not for the willful blindness, hysterical deafness and elective mutism of many too many leaders and experts. Their disregard of the best available science as well as their specious ideological presumptions, the ones derived from the culturally extolled virtue of unbridled greed on one hand and the endless global growth of human production, consumption and propagation activities on the other, appear to be directing the children down a short, patently unsustainable "primrose path" to an unimaginable confrontation with some sort of colossal ecological wreckage, I suppose.
Thanks again to all for speaking out loudly and clearly.
Sincerely,
Steve
Post new comment