climate change– tag –

For generations, Ireland’s peatlands provided fuel, jobs, and warmth. Today, the country is bringing water back to drained bogs. Explore how peatland restoration is reshaping carbon conservation, local livelihoods, and the meaning of a just transition.

Beyond Iceland’s glacial lagoons lies a changing relationship between ice, water, electricity, and livelihoods. As glaciers retreat, they reshape the landscape—and the choices facing the people who depend on it.

Hokkaido’s drift ice is more than a winter spectacle. Its formation, movement, and melting help shape the seasonal rhythms of Shiretoko’s sea. What might change as the ice retreats?

The fish arriving at a harbor carry clues to a changing sea. Explore how landing records and fishers’ observations help reveal shifts in marine ecosystems—and how coastal communities can adapt their fisheries, businesses, and food traditions.

The sea may look unchanged while oxygen levels fall beneath its surface. Explore how ocean warming and excessive nutrient inputs can affect the places where fish and other marine organisms live—and why changes in catches require more than one explanation.

Everyday products connect consumers to Indonesia’s peatlands through palm oil supply chains. Behind low prices lie the costs of drainage, fires and carbon emissions—and the challenge of protecting wetlands while supporting farmers.

Peat fires can smoulder beneath the surface long after visible flames disappear. The deeper cause often begins years earlier, when drainage turns wet, carbon-rich soil into fuel.

Retreating glaciers expose rock slopes to new conditions, while warming permafrost can weaken ice within their fractures. What do these changes mean for mountain communities and infrastructure?

As glaciers melt, rivers may carry more water for a time. Peak water marks the point when that contribution begins to fall, creating new challenges for farms, cities, hydropower and ecosystems.

Smoke from distant cities and fires can reach Himalayan glaciers. The black carbon it carries darkens snow, increases heat absorption and adds pressure to the water sources that sustain communities downstream.

Glaciers preserve traces of past pollution alongside records of Earth’s climate. As the ice melts, PFAS, metals and other substances may move into rivers and lakes, raising new questions for downstream communities.

Lake Urmia’s retreat has exposed vast salt flats in northwestern Iran. Its decline reflects both a changing climate and decisions about how water is used for farming across the watershed.

Lake Chad shrank dramatically in the past, but its story is not one of steady disappearance. Its changing shoreline reshapes farmland, fishing grounds, pasture, and daily life across four countries.

Lake Titicaca connects the lives and ecosystems of Peru and Bolivia. As water levels fall and pollution persists, its changing shores threaten totora wetlands, native species, and the communities that depend on the lake.

As the Great Salt Lake shrinks, its exposed bed changes more than the shoreline. Rising salinity threatens a vital food web, while windblown dust may carry lakebed sediments toward nearby communities.

Each winter, Lake Biwa’s waters mix and carry oxygen to the lakebed. Warmer winters could weaken this “deep breath,” changing life beneath its calm surface.

Cities have been designed to remove rainwater as quickly as possible. But pavement and rapid drainage concentrate runoff within a shorter period, increasing pluvial flood risk. Future cities must combine drainage with storage, infiltration, and delay.

Extreme weather is intensifying, but rainfall alone does not determine the scale of a disaster. Land use, urban development, river engineering, sediment loss, exposure, and social vulnerability all shape what happens after the rain reaches the ground.

As climate change raises river temperatures, cold-water refuges are becoming essential infrastructure. Riparian forests, springs, tributaries, deep pools, fish passages, and dam operations can form a connected network that helps freshwater species survive extreme heat.

Climate change, drought, dams, water withdrawals, and the loss of riparian forests are warming rivers. As cold-water habitats shrink, fish need connected thermal refuges where they can escape extreme heat, survive, and reproduce.

Air conditioning protects people from dangerous heat, but many systems contain HFC refrigerants with global warming effects hundreds or thousands of times greater than carbon dioxide. How can society provide essential cooling without intensifying climate change?