An iceberg threatens a village in Greenland, July 2018, Magnus Kristensen For a week in July 2018, a giant 100m-tall iceberg loomed over a tiny village on the west coast of Greenland. Villagers were evacuated, and the world watched in suspense: if a chunk of the 10m-tonne iceberg had broken apart or “calved”, it would have caused a tsunami and obliterated the settlement of Innaarsuit. Eventually, it drifted away from the shore – but as glaciers melt, we can expect to see more masses of ice breaking off and floating dangerously close to land.
Dust storms hit New South Wales, Australia, January 2020, Jason Davies This drone-captured image shows a monster dust storm that engulfed central New South Wales in Australia in January 2020. One local resident described the scene as “like an apocalyptic movie”. Drier conditions caused by climate change have been linked to an increase in the frequency and severity of sand and dust storms across the globe. As well as affecting agriculture, industry and the climate itself, airborne dust can cause serious health problems.
A family clings to life in a wildfire, Tasmania, January 2013, Tim Holmes Seen as the defining image of the fires that ravaged Australia in 2013, this photo shows a woman and her five grandchildren taking refuge in the water under a jetty. A bushfire had engulfed their home in a small fishing town in Tasmania. The image was shot by the children’s grandfather, Tim Holmes, before he managed to retrieve a dinghy in which the family could evacuate. “The atmosphere was so incredibly toxic,” Holmes told an interviewer soon after. “We were all just heads, water up to our chins, just trying to breathe.”
China’s record-breaking heatwave, August 2022, Thomas Peter The worst heatwave ever recorded took place in China this summer. Soaring temperatures, drought and wildfires led to crop failures, power shortages and factory shutdowns. In this dramatic image, the pagodas of Luoxingdun Island can be seen towering over the dried-out bed of the country’s largest freshwater lake in the south-east Jiangxi province.
A man pushes children on a satellite dish through flooding in the Jaffarabad district of Pakistan, August 2022, Fida Hussain Catastrophic flooding in Pakistan this summer submerged a third of the country, destroying homes, communities and livestock. An estimated 33 million people – that’s one in seven of the population – have been affected. At least 1,700 have died. Waterborne diseases and malnutrition are among the main continuing health threats. The long-term economic impact will be vast.
Giraffes die of thirst in Kenya, December 2021, Ed Ram Over the past two years, the Horn of Africa has experienced the worst drought in more than four decades, leading to millions of deaths of humans and animals. The devastation is encapsulated in this aerial shot by photojournalist Ed Ram, showing the carcasses of six giraffes strewn across the arid ground on the outskirts of a village in Kenya’s Wajir county. The animals died after getting stuck in mud when trying to drink from a reservoir that had almost dried up.
SOS sign in Puerto Rico during Hurricane Maria, September 2017, Angelina Ruiz-Lambides This photograph of an SOS sign scrawled on the pavement in the coastal town of Punta Santiago in Puerto Rico became the defining image of Hurricane Maria, the lethal storm that swept through the northern Caribbean in September 2017. Around 3,000 people died and the disaster caused $90bn (£80bn) in damage. Across Puerto Rico, power was cut off; an aid official spotted this distress signal during an aerial assessment of the aftermath. The snap was circulated on social media and brought help to Punta Santiago soon after.
A minister addresses Cop26 while standing in seawater, Tuvalu, 2021, Tuvalu Ministry of Justice, Communication and Foreign Affairs In one of the most memorable moments of last November’s Cop26, the foreign minister of Tuvalu, an island nation in the south Pacific, addressed a speech to the summit while knee-deep in the Pacific. “Climate change and sea level rise are deadly and existential threats to Tuvalu and low-lying atoll countries,” Simon Kofe said. “We are sinking.”
“We have to bring these images to people who don’t understand the context of low-lying island states,” the politician says now of his video, “so they can appreciate our reality when we say we may lose everything.”
Earthrise, December 1968, William Anders This celebrated image of the Earth emerging beyond the lunar horizon has been credited with kickstarting the modern environmental movement. The landscape photographer Galen Rowell called it “the most influential environmental photograph ever taken”. Earthrise was captured by astronaut William Anders on 24 December 1968 during the Apollo 8 voyage – the first crewed mission to orbit the moon. “People realised that we lived on this fragile planet and we needed to take care of it,” Anders later observed of the photograph’s impact. “This is the only home we have.”
Wildfires in Greece, August 2021, Konstantinos Tsakalidis In the summer of 2021, wildfires raged across the Mediterranean. This image of an elderly woman bathed in the orange light of flames has become an unforgettable symbol of the destruction. Captured on 8 August 2021, it depicts 81-year-old Panayiota Kritsiopi fleeing from her home on the Greek island of Evia. “At that moment I was shouting, not only for myself, but for the whole village,” Kritsiopi said later.
Amazon deforestation in Brazil, August 2019, Mayke Toscano The deforestation of the Amazon rainforest has become an emblem for the human-driven destruction of our planet. This aerial view of razed forest in the Brazilian Amazon was taken in 2019, in the first year of the presidency of Jair Bolsonaro, who in nearly four years has overseen a staggering rise in deforestation rates, which are around 75% higher than in the previous decade. Fires are often used to clear the land, mostly for beef and soy farming, which results in drier conditions and further uncontrolled blazes – a vicious cycle that means the former carbon sink now produces more emissions than it is capable of absorbing.
Flooding in Venice, Italy, November 2019, Filippo Monteforte “Venice is eternity itself,” said the poet Joseph Brodsky. But can the famously precarious “floating city” survive that long? Three years ago, Venice was hit by its worst floods in more than half a century. This shot of people standing thigh-deep in water in front of St Mark’s Basilica captures the scale of the flooding. More than 80% of the city was submerged, causing damage estimated at €1bn (£867m). Two people died.
A ghost village emerges in Galicia, Spain, February 2022, Brais Lorenzo Record-breaking droughts this year have unearthed a series of long-buried objects across the world, including a circle of megalithic stones dubbed “the Spanish Stonehenge”, second world war battleships, and 19th‑century shipwrecks. This photograph shows the eerie scene of a ghost village that surfaced during a drought in the Galicia region of Spain. The small settlement of Aceredo, previously home to around 120 people, had been flooded in 1992 to create a reservoir. Three decades later, the nearly empty reservoir revealed a remarkably intact site. Amid the houses and streets, visitors spotted astonishing details, such as a drinking fountain still spurting water, stacked crates of empty beer bottles, and a rusted car.
Coral bleaching at the Great Barrier Reef, Australia, March 2017 Brett Monroe Garner Marine scientist Charlie Veron, dubbed the “godfather of coral” for his pioneering work in the field, took the first published photo of bleached coral in the early 1980s. At the time, he thought it was a new species of the usually colourful organism. Now we know that ghostly white corals – as seen in this photograph taken at the Great Barrier Reef in 2017 – are a clear warning sign of an ecosystem in distress.
A company spray-paints grass green, California, US, May 2015, Justin Sullivan For the past two decades, California has had its worst drought in more than a millennium. This image of a man spraying a dried-up lawn with green paint was taken in spring 2015, an especially dry period. Around the world, people were stunned by reports of businesses offering this strange service – applying such a superficial fix to the effects of a severe crisis seemed absurd. Jim Power, founder of grass-paint manufacturer LawnLift, was defiant: “People think it sounds ridiculous when they first hear about it, but they try it, and instantly they’re hooked.”
Huskies pull a sledge through water, Greenland, June 2019, Steffen M Olsen This startling image of husky dogs pulling a sledge through melted ice in north-west Greenland was captured by Steffen Olsen, a scientist with the Danish Meteorological Institute. Olsen and a team of local hunters were collaborating on a project to monitor climate change, ocean conditions and the sea ice in the Inglefield fjord. He snapped the photo on his phone during an unsuccessful attempt to retrieve the team’s scientific instruments before the ice melted. “We had not previously experienced water on the ice this early in the summer,” he recalls. “The local team working with me said this was beyond anything they had experienced before.”
A Queen’s Guard is given a sip of water during the record-breaking heatwave, London, July 2022, John Sibley Might the record temperatures in the UK this summer be the wake-up call we need? A reading of 40.3C was recorded in the Lincolnshire village of Coningsby on 19 July. This is startling for a country renowned for its temperate maritime (read: soggy) climate. And in fact, highhumidity in the UK – which makes it harder for sweat to evaporate and cool our bodies – can exacerbate the effects of the heat.
Golfers in Washington state during a wildfire, September 2017, Kristi McCluer “In the pantheon of visual metaphors for America today, this is the money shot,” tweeted the TV writer (and creator of The Wire) David Simon in response to this image of golfers calmly putting against the backdrop of a wildfire. It was snapped by local amateur photographer Kristi McCluer, in 2017, on the third day of a fire that swept the Columbia River Gorge in Oregon and Washington for three months, burning 50,000 acres.
Polluted New Year in Mexicali, Mexico, January 2018, Eliud Gil Samaniego The sun burns fiercely above an urban landscape shrouded in smog. This is Mexicali, a city just south of the US-Mexico border – one of the most polluted cities in North America – photographed on New Year’s Day in 2018. Air pollution and climate change are closely linked: both are driven largely by burning fossil fuels, while hot weather makes smog more likely to form. The World Health Organization estimates that pollutants in the air we breathe contribute to 7m premature deaths a year from all sources, indoor and outdoor. Of these, 3.6m are estimated to come from burning fossil fuels.
A starving polar bear, Canada, July 2017, Cristina Mittermeier “We wanted people to realise that when scientists say polar bears might become extinct, the way they will die is through slow, painful starvation,” says conservation photographer Cristina Mittermeier. In December 2017, Mittermeier and her husband, fellow photographer Paul Nicklen, made worldwide headlines after publishing footage of an emaciated polar bear struggling across iceless terrain in the Canadian Arctic.
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