Rising sea temperatures makes the conditions coral needs to survive intolerable. Reefs – a vital ecosystem and shelter for countless species – are under acute threat, with research presented in 2020 suggesting that between 70% and 90% of coral reefs will be dead by 2040. The reefs – which exist in a delicate symbiosis with the algae that provide them with nutrients. If the temperature rises too much, the algae – called zooxanthellae – can’t colonise the coral, and the calcium carbonate structures ‘bleach.’ Here, photographer David Doubilet demonstrates the contrast between a healthy Opal Reef, on Australia’s Great Barrier Reef, in 2010 vs 2019. The damage was likely due to an ocean temperature spike in 2016.
A kangaroo and her joey peer through stands of burned trees after a series of fires ripped through Mallacoota, in Southern Australia, in September 2020. Large areas of forests burned out of control during the bushfire season, threatening the habitats of many endemic animals and killing their numbers in the billions.
Wildfires, seasonally supercharged by dry spells and extreme heatwaves, decimate ecosystems and release carbon from one of its most stable stores – trees – into the atmosphere. This self-spiralling cycle can ultimately lead to regeneration, but in a world already depleted of its forest, enduring a human catalysed extinction event and suffering rising temperatures, fire – quite apart from the human cost – is a foe we cannot afford. This aerial view of destroyed lemon trees in Robore, Bolivia, illustrates the scale of wildfire destruction against an area untouched by the flames.
Devastating wildfires continue to erupt around the world on an unprecedented scale, from the American west – where some of the world’s ancient redwoods stand in the way of flames – to Greece, Siberia and Australia. Here, a truck drives through wildfire near Seeley Lake, Montana, where a burn has jumped a road.
An anteater, its paws burned, recovers from its injuries by snacking on milk and ants at a sanctuary in Aguas Calientas, Bolivia. Fires raged across Brazil, Bolivia, Peru and Paraguay in 2019. Most were set deliberately to clear the land for plantations, with a colossal toll on the wildlife – particularly the slow moving animals like anteaters and sloths, but even swift creatures like monkeys. In Brazil’s Pantanal wetlands, the damage was devastating. The following year, in 2020, the Pantanal burned again – and the area affected by fire tripled.
Ice in Disko Bay, Greenland, glistens where it catches the low Arctic sun. Greenland’s ice has been the subject of much study in recent years; with its current melting rate scientists predict it will lose more ice this century than in the last 12,000 years. If the ice sheet – one of only two on the planet, with Antarctica’s – melted completely, it would add 24 feet to global sea levels.
Alaska, like many northern latitudes, is warming at around twice the global average. The seas around the state, with rising temperatures, are providing ideal conditions for harmful algal blooms (HABs). These are having a devastating impact on food chains, effectively turning shellfish into poison pills that have claimed the lives of whales, walruses, countless birds and other sea creatures that depend on them. Here, a biologist struggles with her emotions as she calms a sea otter dying a gravel beach in the town of Homer.
Global heating also threatens centuries-old ways of living and subsisting. Here, a young whaler stacks meat in his family’s permafrost cellar in Barrow, Alaska. This natural cooling mechanism is being compromised by the melting of permafrost and the thawing of ground that has remained frozen for thousands of years. Wildfires in regions previously frozen – such as those in Siberia in 2021 – are burning and releasing CO2 from tundra and peatland, the most carbon-dense ecosystems in the world.
Newtok, in Alaska, is sinking. As the permafrost underpinning the 350-strong settlement thaws, the ground is crumbling, causing the already low-lying settlement to confront the threat of inundation from the Bering Sea, which also provides the town with its subsistence. Now, with the sea just feet from some homes, the entire town is facing the possibility of relocation.
Other coastal communities around the world are feeling the impact of rising seas and extreme weather. While these include low lying oceanic islands, such as the Marshal Islands, Fiji and the Maldives, some major urban centres are also at acute risk of both. This image shows Sunny Isles Beach in Miami, Florida – home to over 20,000 people – and highlights both the scale of what is at risk, and how close to that risk it is. Versus 1992, this part of Florida may see up to 10 inches of sea level rise by 2030.
With open air rubbish burning, industry which outweighs the infrastructure to handle its waste, and an ecologically devastated river – the Yamuna – Delhi is one of the world’s most polluted cities. Occupying a space smaller than greater London but with a population over twice as large, waste in Delhi has itself become a grim industry for some. Here, kids go through garbage thrown off a bridge to find pieces that can be given to recycle shops, where they can earn up to 1,000 rupees a day – in some cases more than three times the wage of other city workers.
Heatwaves and tropical storms can supercharge hurricanes, a situation exacerbated by global warming. 2017 saw Puerto Rico battered by Hurricane Maria – which inflicted the worst damage on the island in recorded history. Over 3,000 people died in the Category 5 storm, which caused some $90 billion (£66 million) of damage, including countless crops, housing and infrastructure critical to sanitation and irrigation. The emotional toll was also high: attempted suicide tripled in the three months following the hurricane as residents struggled to put the pieces of their lives back together. Here, dawn breaks over all that remains of a home in Playa El Negro five months after Hurricane Maria.
In some of the world’s poorest countries, extreme weather patterns are making already challenging conditions intolerable. An aerial photo captures devastation above Jeremie, Haiti, in the wake of Category 4 storm Hurricane Matthew, October 2016. The Caribbean island has been battered by successive natural disasters amidst political instability and poverty. In summer 2021, the country endured a magnitude 7.2 earthquake, a direct hit from tropical storm Grace and the assassination of its president all within a six week period.
Lake Urmia is an enormous hypersaline inland lake in Iran that has been the victim of a slew of impacts. Evaporation from warming and the plundering of the lake’s waters for irrigation have meaned that between 1995 and 2013 the lake lost around 90% of its volume. Most of it is now a salty desert, and scientists fear the lake may disappear completely if critical water saving measures are not adopted.
Lake Urmia is also home to a unique ecosystem, with its islands providing breeding grounds for migratory birds such as flamingos and pelicans, and a saline environment for a unique diversity of plankton. The lake’s dramatic water reduction has unbalanced these systems, with an increase of salinity causing organisms – specifically a family of algae called Dunaliella and bacteria called Halobacteriaceae – to increase in density and release red pigment, changing the colour of the entire lake. Here, despite this, two summer holidaymakers relax in Lake Urmia’s waters.
A young child is treated for pneumonia in the intensive care unit of an Ulaanbaatar hospital. With an expanding population reliant on coal-burning stoves, during winter the Mongolian capital is one of the most polluted cities in the world, with micrograms of pollutants at 27 times the WHOs recommended safety levels. Most vulnerable are children, with pneumonia a leading cause of child mortality.
