Water & Oceans

"The world’s oceans are gasping for breath, a report issued Saturday at the annual global climate talks in Madrid has concluded."

"On 'good' bad days, the shells lay open at the bottom of the river, shimmering in the refracted sunlight. Their insides, pearl white and picked clean of flesh, flicker against the dark riverbed like a beacon, alerting the world above to a problem below."

"The level of alarm is already high in the Republic of the Marshall Islands, as the Pacific island nation struggles with rising sea levels and the after-effects of decades of U.S. nuclear testing on its atolls."

"Officials in the Florida Keys announced what many coastal governments nationwide have long feared, but few have been willing to admit: As seas rise and flooding gets worse, not everyone can be saved."

"Taxpayers could be forced to spend billions of dollars to bail out the federal government's flood program as private-sector insurers begin covering homes with little risk of flooding while clustering peril-prone properties in the indebted public program."

"At its peak, one meltwater lake drained the equivalent of an Olympic-size swimming pool every three seconds."

"A cerulean lake consisting of glacial meltwater on the surface of the Greenland ice sheet, located about 18 miles from where the Store Glacier meets the sea in west Greenland, briefly became one of the world’s tallest waterfalls during the course of five hours in July 2018.

"Help has been slow to arrive to White Swan after severe flooding compounded long-standing social and economic inequalities."

"ISAFJORDUR, Iceland — Before it became a “Game of Thrones” location, before Justin Bieber stalked the trails of Fjadrargljufur, and before hordes of tourists descended upon this small island nation, there were the fish."

"The monsoon is central to Indian life and lore. ... Climate change is now messing with the monsoon, making seasonal rains more intense and less predictable. Worse, decades of short-sighted government policies are leaving millions of Indians defenseless in the age of climate disruptions – especially the poor."