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Artic Melting A group of people living in the Arctic have filed a lawsuit against the US government, claiming its climate change policies violate their human rights. The Inuit Circumpolar Conference (ICC) says that by failing to control emissions of greenhouse gases, the US is damaging the livelihoods those living in the Arctic. The group has filed a petition with the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights demanding that the US limit its emissions.
Participation in the Kyoto Protocol, where dark green indicates countries that have signed and ratified the treaty and yellow indicates states that have signed and hope to ratify the treaty. Notably, Australia and the United States have signed but, currently, decline to ratify it.
Latin American Storms and Floods The 2005 Atlantic hurricane season has brought an unprecedented 13 hurricanes to date, of which five—Dennis, Emily, Stan, Wilma, and Beta—along with Tropical Storm Gamma, have devastated parts of Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Mexico, Cuba, the Bahamas, Haiti, and Grenada.
Whole families were wiped out, and children swept away from their parents by the mudslides and flood waters.
South Asia Crisis • More than 50 people have been killed and many are unaccounted for in fierce storms and flooding that have hit the Bay of Bengal since the weekend. Officials in Bangladesh believe scores of fishermen may be missing. • Indian authorities say dozens were killed and hundreds are missing in Andhra Pradesh state. • More than 140,000 have been evacuated there after rains swelled rivers and inundated villages, disrupting roads, trains and power supplies.
Severe monsoon floods are affecting the lives of millions of people across Bangladesh and the northern Indian States of Assam and Bihar. Bangladesh has been the hardest hit with over 36 million people - one quarter of the population - affected and 876 people killed. Nearly two thirds of the capital Dhaka was inundated when the floods first hit in July. The floods have destroyed bridges, schools and roads and shattered the livelihoods of thousands as the waters swept away crops. Thousands have lost their homes.
Sunamganj is inaccessible except by air, with all main roads cut off
European Heat Waves • At least 35,000 people died as a result of the record heatwave that scorched Europe in August 2003, says an environmental think tank. • France suffered the worst losses, with 14,802 people dying from causes attributable to the blistering heat. This is "more than 19 times the death toll from the SARS epidemic worldwide", notes the EPI.
The searing August heat claimed about 7000 lives in Germany, nearly 4200 lives in both Spain and Italy. Over 2000 people died in the UK, with the country recording is first ever temperature over 100° Fahrenheit on 10th August.
The very old and the frail are most susceptible to heat related illness.
"Though heat waves rarely are given adequate attention, they claim more lives each year than floods, tornadoes, and hurricanes combined," warns the EPI. "Heat waves are a silent killer, mostly affecting the elderly, the very young, or the chronically ill."
The Amazon Big river boat trapped on a sand bank, during one of the worst droughts ever recorded in the Amazon.
Winds of change. A Somalian girl searches for edible seeds among the dust. Increasing droughts are one of the most devastating effects of climate change.
Tibet A 31 year old Tibetan woman at her home in Yellow River township. She has 4 children and once owned 20 cattle and 30 sheep and lived well from the profits of the herd. However, due to the increase in degraded grassland she lost her livelihood and now is dependent on her husband to go out to find odd jobs to support the family. Global warming is already leading to the region drying up.
Time is running out for the planet's glaciers. As global temperatures rise, ice blocks on every continent are melting at an alarming pace. Montana's Glacier National Park, for example, will lose its namesakes within 30 years. The Swiss Alps are crumbling without the ice that once held its fractured rock faces together. And at least one scientist has suggested laying a tarp over the famous snows of Kilimanjaro to keep the sun at bay.
Swiss Alps Scientists now believe global warming is melting the Alps, threatening widespread devastation over the next two decades.
Up to half of Switzerland's ski resorts are facing ruin because of global warming, and low altitude resorts in Austria, Germany and Italy expect to have no snow within a decade. • "We don't expect to have snow in low lying resorts such as Klosters for more than the next 10 years," Werner Schmultz, a professor at the World Radiation Centre, based in Davos, Switzerland, said last month. • "Our research suggests that since about 1980 the temperature increase from solar activity was steeper than ever. We estimate that 50 per cent of this is as a result of greenhouse gas emissions.
The Trift glacier near the Grimsel pass. The tongue has become a lake and path which used to lead across it has disappeared. It must now be crossed via a Nepalese style "rope" bridge, 102 m long (335 ft) long, which opened in summer 2005.
Thanks primarily to global warming, all that remains of many of the Sierra Nevada's glaciers are shrinking bowls of snow.
The break-up of the Larsen B ice shelf in early 2002. This event has been attributed to the effects of global warming. That it occurred is beyond dispute and that it is a result of the warming of the Antarctic Peninsula where it is situated is also beyond dispute. What remains unclear is whether or not this is a taste of things to come and an indicator of an Antarctic-wide phenomena or simply a localized result of the localized warming of the Antarctic Peninsula region alone.
Global Warming • The Earth's climate has changed many times in the past. Subtropical forests have spread from the south into more temperate (or milder, cooler climates) areas. Millions of years later, ice sheets spread from the north covering much of the northern United States, Europe and Asia with great glaciers. Today, some scientists believe human beings are changing the climate. How can that be?
Over the past few centuries, people have been burning more amounts of fuels such as wood, coal, oil, natural gas and gasoline. The gases formed by the burning, such as carbon dioxide, are building up in the atmosphere. They act like greenhouse glass. The result some experts believe is the Earth heating up and undergoing global warming.
The Greenhouse Effect traps heat inside the Earth’s atmosphere. This causes our climate increasing in temperature. This is known as Global Warming.
