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| A solitary bear sits on the edge of one of the Barter Islands, Alaska. There is no snow, when at this time of year, there should be. The locals in Kaktovic noted that it's been an unseasonably warm winter, and that the ice will be late in forming this year. This will have an impact on the local polar bear population when it comes time to hunt seals for their food in the winter months. Image: Patty Waymire, National Geographic Your Shot |
The effects of climate change are already visible in communities across the world.
Prolonged droughts are zapping fields dry from Texas to Tanzania. Powerful storms are flooding homes from North Carolina to Nepal. At the farthest ends of the planet, glaciers are melting and habitats are vanishing.
Amid such disruption, a global band of photographers has managed to turn these concerning realities into a collection of stunning scenes from their own backyards. National Geographic this fall tasked its online photo community, called Your Shot, with submitting photographs on the theme of human-caused climate change.
Your Shot includes amateur and professional photographers, in their teens up to their 90s, who use smartphone or point-and-shoot cameras.
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| Dried-up ponds in Israel caused by a lack of rain. Image: Tomasz Solinski, National Geographic Your Shot |
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| An aerial view of the Chong Kneas floating village on Tonle Sap Lake, Cambodia. The lake's seasonal cycles are threatened by changing rainfall patterns and rising temperatures. Image: Stuart Chape, National Geographic Your Shot |
"It's not just something that's going to happen in future generations — we're really seeing the effects happening right now, today," she told Mashable.
NatGeo displayed a selection of the Your Shot images earlier this month during the United Nations climate negotiations in Marrakech, Morocco. Country leaders worked to create an action plan for the Paris Climate Agreement, which commits governments to curbing their greenhouse gas emissions.
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| Factories off the coast of Singapore spew greenhouse gas emissions. Image: Terence Chiew, National Geographic Your Shot |
Corcoran said she hopes the Your Shot assignment will inspire a sense of urgency in everyone who sees the photographs.
"We're trying to connect with the viewer, so they see the image in a way that means something to them on a personal level," she said. "Then, they can take that next step [toward action], because it affects them personally."
Here are more of the surreal Your Shot images, provided by National Geographic:
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| An ice cave in Iceland's Svínafellsjökull Glacier is rapidly expanding due to the effects of global warming. Icelandic glaciers have lost 12 percent of their size since 2000. Image: Tom Schifanella, National Geographic Your Shot |
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| A woman stands on the Indian island of Mousuni, in the Bay of Bengal, where a rise in sea level threatens to permanently force families from their homes. Image: Arka Dutta, National Geographic Your Shot |
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| Guard dogs confront a polar bear on the Franz Josef Land archipelago. As Arctic sea ice disappears, bears are increasingly moving into human settlements in search of food. Image: Vladimir Melnik, National Geographic Your Shot |
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| A patch of parched dirt in the drought-stricken Puruliya district of West Bengal, India. Image: Ujjal Das, National Geographic Your Shot |
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| A man moves tree trunks in the Zagros Mountains near Hamedan, Iran. Deforestation affects 30 percent of the forest. Image: Mohamad Ali Najib, National Geographic Your Shot |
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| A man fishes in a drought-affected lake in California's Sierra Nevada Mountains. Image: Pamela Peters, National Geographic Your Shot |
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