17/12/2019

On The Front Line Of The Climate Emergency – In Pictures

The Guardian

As COP25 takes place in Madrid, this collection of photographs from Getty Images highlights the climate crisis around the world, from Greenland’s melting ice sheets to rising seal levels in Alaska and Louisiana, the forest fires in the Amazon and Indonesia, and the impact of forests and the Lobster fishery in Maine

A drone view shows how close some of the homes
are to the lagoon in Kivalina, Alaska
The residents of Kivalina are hoping to stay on their ancestral lands, rather than dispersing due to their island being swallowed by the rising waters. The city administrator Colleen Swan says the way of life in the village will change with the climate and they will adapt.
Photograph: Joe Raedle/Getty Imageszzz

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Melting ice forms a lake on free-floating ice jammed
into the Ilulissat Icefjord during unseasonably
warm July weather near Ilulissat, Greenland
Climate change is having a profound effect in Greenland, where summers have become longer over the last few decades and glaciers and the Greenland ice cap are retreating more quickly.

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The town of Ilulissat on Disko Bay, Greenland
As the Earth’s climate warms, summers have become longer in Ilulissat, allowing fishermen a wider period to fish from boats on open waters and extending the summer tourist season.

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Locals play soccer on a Saturday in August in Ilulissat, Greenland
Long-term benefits of warmer weather are uncertain, however, as warming waters could have a negative impact on the local fish and whale population.

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Kivalina, which is at the end of an eight-mile barrier reef
between a lagoon and the Chukchi Sea
The village is 83 miles above the Arctic circle. Kivalina and a few other native coastal Alaskan villages face the warming of the Arctic, which has resulted in the loss of sea ice that buffers the island’s shorelines from storm surges and coastal erosion.

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Celina Wesley, Enoch Swan and McKye Swan fish
for tomcod in the Chukchi Sea
The hunters in the village have witnessed the migration patterns of fish, caribou, seal and whale that they need for the long winter months change due to the warming weather.

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A home on stilts sits amid coastal waters
and marshlands in Port Fourchon, Louisiana
A combination of rising waters and sinking land have caused the highest rates of relative sea-level rise on the planet. Since the 1930s, Louisiana has lost more than 2,000 square miles of land and wetlands, an area roughly the size of Delaware. In the past 30 years, as subsidence continues and the effects of climate change increase, Louisiana has been losing a football field’s worth of land every 100 minutes.

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An abandoned boat sits amid dead cypress trees
in coastal waters and marsh in Venice, Louisiana
Many oak trees and cypress trees throughout Louisiana’s coastal marshes have died due to a combination of saltwater intrusion and subsidence.

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The $1.1bn Lake Borgne surge barrier in New Orleans, Louisiana
The massive structure was built by the Army Corps of Engineers along with other reinforcements to defend the city against future hurricanes and storms. The organisation SouthWings provides a network of volunteer pilots that advocate for the restoration and protection of ecosystems.

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A fire burns in a section of the Amazon rainforest
in Candeias do Jamari near Porto Velho, Brazil
According to INPE, Brazil’s national institute of space research, the number of fires detected by satellite in the Amazon region this month is the highest since 2010.

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A section of the Amazon rainforest that has been cleared
in the Candeias do Jamari region
INPE says the number of fires detected by satellite in the Amazon region is the highest since 2010.

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Peatland and forest burns during a fire patrol
by the Indonesian national board for disaster
management in Central Kalimantan, Indonesia
Illegal fires to clear land for agricultural plantations have raged across Indonesia’s Sumatra and Borneo islands as recent satellite data showed that the number of forest fires have jumped sharply.

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A firefighter walks through smog as they
try to extinguish the fire on burned peatland
and fields in Palangkaraya, Central Kalimantan
This rise is adding to concerns about the smog across south-east Asia and the impact of increasing wildfires outbreaks worldwide due to global warming.

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A woman tries to extinguish the fire
on burned peatland and fields near her house
in Palangkaraya, Central Kalimantan
Photograph: Ulet Ifansasti/Getty Images

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New trees grow by dead lodgepole pine killed
by the mountain pine beetle in Beaverhead-Deerlodge
National Forest along the Flint Creek Range in Montana, US
According to the 2017 Montana Climate Assessment, the annual average temperatures in the state has increased 2.5F since 1950 and is projected to increase by about 3F to 7F by 2050.

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A lone lodgepole pine stands
in Beaverhead-Deerlodge National Forest, Montana
As climate change makes summers hotter and drier in the Northern Rockies, forests are threatened with increasing wildfire activity, deadly pathogens and insect infestations, including the mountain pine beetle outbreak.

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A log grapple wheel loader moves and stacks logs
at the Sun Mountain Lumber log yard in Deer Lodge, Montana
Although the number of new trees infested each year by the pine beetle has reduced since the height of the outbreak around 2012, the insects have killed more than 6m acres of forest across Montana since 2000.

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The 4th of July parade in Deer Isle, Maine
Deer Isle and the surrounding area rely heavily on the lobster business, and there has been a surge in lobsters being trapped in recent years.

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Collin Proper waits on the Stonington Lobster co-op wharf
for the lobster boat he crews to arrive before they head
into the Gulf of Maine to check on traps in Stonington, Maine
Reports indicate that since 1982 the temperatures in the Gulf have warmed about 2.3F and the warmer water has helped increase lobster populations.

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Lance, Jeremy Pratt and Nathaniel, all lobstermen,
sort through traps as they toss back a lobster
that is too small to keep in Deer Isle
There is concern among scientists that if in-shore water temperatures continue to rise, it may push lobsters farther offshore to deeper, cooler waters, or northward into the cooler Canadian waters, which over time would disrupt the Maine lobster business.
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