For over twenty years, Virginia-based journalist Earl Swift has been writing about Tangier Island, a tiny slip of land in the Chesapeake Bay several miles from mainland Virginia. Most of the island’s men make their living catching blue crab, while the women run restaurants, the inn, and the grocery store. It’s one of…
If the internet went down, America would devolve into chaos. A new study suggests that’s an increasingly likely possibility as rising sea levels submerge critical infrastructure buried along densely-populated coastlines.
Iceberg calving events are among the more epic spectacles on the planet. But rarely have humans been lucky enough to see them happen in real time, much less capture one on camera.
For many communities in the coastal tropics, colorful corals stand as a natural buffer against the daily ebb and flow of the surf and the occasional big storm. But in the age of sea level rise, this steadfast protection may be waning.
U.S. coastlines saw record levels of high tide flooding last year, thanks to a combination of powerful storms and rising seas. This year is forecast to approach or even surpass that record.
It’s no secret the Great Barrier Reef is in dire straights thanks to human-caused global warming. But it turns out dramatic upheaval is nothing new for the world’s largest living thing.
The resistance is on a roll. Fresh off the small victory of the NASA administrator saying accurate things about climate change, the National Park Service has released a report on climate change that mentions climate change.
Row after row of blackened wood barrels are piled 30 feet high in a dim warehouse on Avery Island in southern Louisiana. Harold “Took” Osborn leads me through the endless stacks, in a setting reminiscent of the final scene of Raiders of the Lost Ark. The recycled bourbon casks are filled with Tabasco mash, laid to…
The Afsluitdijk is a 20-mile dam that has been protecting the low-lying Netherlands from the force of the ocean for decades. According to Daan Roosegaarde, a Dutch artist who works in urban environments, it’s quite famous in the country because “basically, it protects us from drowning.”
If you think the housing crunch is bad in the Bay Area now, just wait. New findings show that more land is sinking into San Francisco Bay than previously thought. Factoring that along with sea level rise projections means even more real estate in harm’s way.
Flying in the nor’easter: maybe don’t do it.
If even a fraction of Antarctica’s ice melts, the resultant sea level rise will reshape coastlines around the world. A new study gets us one step closer to predicting if and when that will happen, by mapping the motion of ice across the entire continent.
If we don’t pump the brakes on climate change, all of Greenland could eventually melt, adding about 24 feet to global sea levels. Add in the West Antarctic ice sheet, and we’re looking at a total of about 40 feet of potential sea level rise from these two ice sheets alone. The question is, when is this going to…
Sea level rise could mean paradise lost in Hawaii. The only island state in the union could face widespread displacement, endangered species habitat destruction, and monster economic losses if oceans rise roughly three feet.
If there’s one thing we’re learning about this global planetary experiment called climate change, it’s that there are unexpected consequences. Case in point: All of the water pouring off Earth’s melting ice sheets is making the oceans heavier, so much so that seafloors are literally sinking. And that could be messing…
If Miami is still around in 100 years, its residents should probably be thanking outgoing mayor Tomas Regalado’s barista, who also happens to be his son.
The West Antarctic ice sheet’s imperiled glaciers get all the attention, but there’s an even larger pile of frozen water across the continent that scientists are starting to worry about. The East Antarctic ice sheet has long been considered very frozen and very stable—but a new analysis of some of its largest glaciers…
There are many good reasons to cut carbon pollution now, but perhaps none is more important than slowing sea level rise. A new study unveiled at the American Geophysical Union’s annual meeting on Wednesday quantifies just how much better off we could be and how many people would be saved from inundation.
Mangroves are underappreciated. Around 100 species of these trees and shrubs blanket tropical estuaries and tidal zones across the globe. Their partially exposed, stilt-like roots extend deep into waterlogged soil, sequestering carbon and protecting coastlines against storm surges. They would seem like the hardiest of…
