For a week in July of last year, a giant 100m-tall ice cube hovered over a tiny village. The world watched in suspense as villagers were evacuated and the world watched as a chunk of the 10m-tonne iceberg broke apart. As glaciers melt, we can expect to see more mass of ice breaking off and floating close to land.
The dust storm that hit central New South Wales in Australia in January 2020 was captured by a drone. The scene was described as apocalyptic by one resident. Climate change has been linked to an increase in sand and dust storms around the world. Health problems can be caused by airborne dust, which affects agriculture, industry and the climate.
The defining image of the fires that ravaged Australia in 2013 is a photo of a woman and her five children under a jetty. They had lost their home in a fire. The image was taken by the children's grandfather before he was able to get the family out of the water. The atmosphere was toxic. All of us were trying to breathe.
The hottest summer on record was in China. Crop failures, power shortages and factory shutdowns were caused by the hot weather. The pagodas of the island can be seen over the dried-out bed of the lake.
In Pakistan, a third of the country was flooded this summer. One in seven of the population has been affected by the disaster. The number of people who have died is 1,700. There are many health threats, including waterborne diseases and malnutrition. The economic impact will last a long time.
Climate change is thought to have made the flooding worse. The UN secretary general said it was amonsoon on steroids. Extreme flooding events are likely to become more common.
Pakistan's climate minister has called for reparations from countries with higher emissions. She said in September that global warming is the "holiest crisis facing the world" and that Pakistan is ground zero.
Shamsie is a British-Pakistani author. The world's richest countries are most responsible for the climate catastrophe, while the poorer nations are paying the highest price. She calls for urgent and binding commitments from the G20 nations. We need to stop using the phrase "financial aid" and instead use words such as "climate justice", "reparation", and "obligation"
Millions of people and animals have died over the past two years in the Horn of Africa due to the worst dry spell in four decades. This aerial shot by Ed Ram shows the carcasses of six giraffes strewn across the arid ground on the outskirts of a village. The animals died when they got stuck in the mud trying to drink from the almost-dried up lake.
The defining image of Hurricane Maria was a photograph of a sign on the pavement in Puerto Rico. The disaster resulted in around 3000 deaths and $90 billion in damage. This distress signal was spotted by an aid official during an aerial assessment of the aftermath. Soon after the snap was shared on social media, help was brought to the area.
We are already in a climate emergency, according to the image. Vulnerable coastal and island communities are disproportionately affected by huge storms, with less resources and less insurance cover.
Natural disasters are being made worse by the warming planet. Kerry Emanuel has been studying the links between hurricanes and climate change for more than four decades. Global warming is believed to be the cause of increased wind speeds and rain in hurricanes.
What is it like to be on the front lines of a disaster? After Maria hit Puerto Rico, resident Janet Gonzalez didn't realize how far her picture had traveled. It did, and we are thankful for that. Now, we are ready to move on.
The foreign minister of Tuvalu, an island nation in the south Pacific, addressed a speech to the summit while knee deep in the Pacific. Climate change and sea level rise are threats to low-lying countries. We are not going well.
The politician says in his video that he needs to show the images to people who don't understand the context of low-lying island states.
Kofe says that the effects of the rising temperatures and ocean are already many and varied in some countries. They include hurricanes, which have wiped out parts of islands, and increased salt in the water.
Many Pacific island nations may not be able to live there in the future. They contribute less than 3% of the world's carbon emissions. The recent extreme weather events show that everyone is affected by climate change, according to Kofe. We have to fight this threat no matter where we live.
Kofe said he was very hopeful when he saw the huge popularity of the footage and the interest in the climate change impacts. Interest and action are not the same thing. We need to bring our message to the major emitters.
The image of the Earth emerging beyond the moon's horizon has been credited with sparking the modern environmental movement. It was called the most influential environmental photograph ever taken. The Apollo 8 voyage was the first crewed mission to go to the moon. The photograph made people realize that we needed to take care of the planet. The only home we have is this one.
An old woman is bathed in the orange light of flames as a symbol of destruction. It depicts an elderly woman fleeing from her home on the Greek island of Evia. At that time, I shouted for the whole village.
The Amazon rainforest has become a symbol for the destruction of our planet by humans. In the first year of the presidency of Jair Bolsonaro, an aerial view of the Brazilian Amazon was taken, which shows a 75% increase in the rate of forest destruction. The former carbon sink now produces more emissions than it is capable of absorbing as a result of fires being used to clear the land for beef and soy farming.
The poet Joseph Brodsky saidVenice is eternal. Can the floating city last that long? Venice was hit by its worst floods in more than 50 years three years ago. The scale of the flooding is captured in this shot of people standing in water. Damage to the city is estimated at 1 billion. There were two deaths.
Extreme flooding is more likely due to rising sea levels around Venice. The Venetian lagoon's mean water level is 50 cm higher than it was in 1897. Many locals have left the historic city centre due to the threat of floods. One of the former residents said that it was too difficult to stay. Living on a boat is like that.
The worst tides have been held back by a system of retractable barriers. The barriers would have to be closed 260 times a year if the sea level rise continued. The lagoon's delicate ecology would be jeopardized by this. The barriers won't be used frequently because they prevent ships from entering and leaving the port.
Even if floods can't be prevented, the rising sea means that Venice's buildings are becoming more and more unstable. Many residents are giving up and moving away. The water levels are eating away at the fabric of the city.
A series of long-buried objects, including a circle of megalithic stones dubbed "the Spanish Stonehenge", have been unearthed this year. The picture shows a ghost village that appeared during a dry spell in Spain. The small settlement of Aceredo was flooded in 1992 to make way for a new lake. A remarkably intact site was found three decades later. Visitors saw amazing details, such as a drinking fountain still spurting water, stacked crates of empty beer bottles, and a rusted car.
The first published photo of bleached coral was taken by Charlie Veron in the early 1980s. He thought it was a new species of organisms. The Great Barrier Reef's ghostly white corals are a clear sign that the environment is in trouble.
Veron explained that coral reefs get their bright colors from zooxanthellae. They and the coral provide each other with food and water. The algae overproduction of oxygen causes them to become pathogens. The corals are able to starve to death. Warming ocean temperatures are triggering mass bleaching events more frequently. Reef corals have been in decline for more than 20 years. Veron says that the Great Barrier Reef has lost 50% of its corals.
There are consequences to this damage. Veron says that the loss of the Great Barrier Reef is not the worst of it. Half of all marine species live in coral reefs. The beginning of global mass extinction will be caused by the loss of coral reefs.
California has had its worst dry spell in more than a century. A picture of a man spraying a dried up lawn with green paint was taken in the spring of 2015. People around the world were shocked by the reports of businesses offering this strange service. Jim Power, founder of grass-paint manufacturer LawnLift, was defiant: "People think it sounds ridiculous when they first hear about it, but they try it, and immediately they're hooked."
The picture of husky dogs pulling a sledge through melted ice was taken by a scientist with the Danish Meteorological Institute. Climate change, ocean conditions, and the sea ice in the Inglefield fjord were all being monitored by a team of hunters. He took the photo on his phone as he tried to get the scientific instruments back. Water on the ice was a new experience for him. The local team working with me said this was something they had never seen before.
An illustration of the alarming pace at which the sea ice in Greenland is disappearing went viral after being shared by a colleague on the social networking site. This is a response to warm weather. More solar radiation can heat the ocean when sea ice forms later in the fall.
The ice sheet lost more ice than any other year in the last 15 years. Increased coastal erosion and loss of marine habitats are some of the impacts of accelerated melting.
There are people who have engaged in climate and sustainable initiatives because of this photo. I'm thankful that it helped to alert people to the climate crisis.
Maybe the record temperatures in the UK this summer will wake us up. There was a reading in the village of Coningsby. For a country renowned for its maritime climate, this is quite shocking. High humidity in the UK can make it harder for sweat to evaporate and cool our bodies.
The image of a Buckingham Palace guard in a red tunic and bearskin hat having to drink water is indicative of the UK's inability to adjust to the heat. It was on the front pages of several newspapers. One user suggested a change to a hotter uniform.
The UK could see temperatures exceed 40C as frequently as every three years by the end of the century, according to the Met Office. Bearskin hats are no longer available.
In the pantheon of visual metaphors for America today, this is the money shot. The picture was taken on the third day of a fire in the Columbia River Gorge in Washington.
The sun shines above the city. Mexicali is a city just south of the US-Mexico border that is one of the most polluted in North America. Climate change and air pollution are both caused by burning fossil fuels. 7 million premature deaths a year are caused by pollutants in the air, according to the World Health Organization. 3.6 million are estimated to be from burning fossil fuels.
When scientists say polar bears might become extinct, they want people to know how they will die. In December of last year, Mittermeier and her husband, Paul Nicklen, published a video of a polar bear that was in need of medical attention.
Critics argued that it was not possible to prove why this creature was so sick. Experts agree that polar bears are in danger. Krista Wright is the executive director of Polar Bears International and she says that the sea ice that polar bears need is melting due to global warming. If business-as- usual greenhouse gas emissions continue, it is likely that all but a few polar bear populations will collapse by the year 2200.
The photograph and video caused a bigger discussion about the climate crisis. She says that photography is one of the best ways to tell complex stories. For an entire planet in distress, a polar bear is a canary in the coalmine.
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