The world changes a little faster these days. As concentrations of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere , more and more of the sun's heat gets trapped. That heat affects the planet in a variety of ways: raising global average temperatures, melting ice, increasing downpours, lengthening droughts and more. And this global warming is already transforming some of the places humans hold most dear.
The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization keeps a list of what it deems world heritage sites: human-made or natural places of "outstanding universal value," from the Palace of Versailles in France to the in Bangladesh. There are more than 1,000 such places now—and many of them may be changed beyond recognition by global warming.
Amazon Rainforest: Logging and fire have returned to threaten the , which sprawls over 5.5 million square kilometers in Brazil, Peru, Colombia, Bolivia, Ecuador, French Guiana, Guyana, Suriname and Venezuela, currently. After years of reduced human impacts, agribusiness, farmers and loggers have begun to eat away at the forest anew, according to the most recent statistics and satellite images. Less forest means less rain, a problem that may be exacerbated as the climate changes and dries out the world's largest remaining rainforest.
The Arctic: in Siberia, in Alaska, —all speak to the same thaw of the Arctic. This rapid warm-up in the Earth's northerly air conditioner will mean even faster global warming as more of the greenhouse gas methane enters the atmosphere and darker earth or open waters replace reflective white snow and ice. Summertime sea ice may become a memory, and even the iconic white polar bear may brown as it interbreeds with the bears moving north into warming climes.
Boreal forest: This vast global forest, dominated by conifer trees, covers much of Canada, Russia and Scandinavia. But as the northern regions continue to warm, the southern edge of the will give way to grasslands, and the forest as a whole could shrink by half. Meanwhile, wildfires and new insect threats—like the pine beetle eating enormous swaths of forest land to death today—will plague the remnant.
Doñana wetlands: Migratory birds in Europe face a host of threats, not least . Now pollution and loss of groundwater due to farming have begun to shrink these seasonal marshes in southern Spain, one of the last wintering sites for waterfowl in Europe. Add global warming's impacts as well and UNESCO believes this natural wonder faces a "very high threat" of disappearing.
The fynbos: This 90,000-square-kilometer strip of scrubland in the Western Cape of South Africa hosts a greater array of unique flowers than anywhere else on the continent. Its distinctive , such as the king protea that is South Africa's national flower, evolved in the cooler climate of the geologic past and are therefore especially susceptible to rising temperatures, which may also bring increased wildfires.
The Great Barrier Reef: It's not just warming waters affecting the world's largest reef, which stretches 2,600 kilometers. It is also the of the surrounding oceans. In addition, human pollution is exacerbating disease in the reef ecosystem, and dredging and sewage are in sediment and sludge. Already nearly half of all the living coral on the reef is gone. The reef itself could become but a skeletal remnant, like those that dot the Caribbean. In fact, coral reefs the world over are struggling with rising water temperatures, among other human-induced challenges.
Mahajamba Bay: One of the largest of the remaining mangrove forests may drown. Mangroves once covered much of the coastlines of Africa and Asia, but these places where rivers meet sea under the shelter of swampy trees are under threat from a variety of human activities, including coastal development—despite providing from tropical cyclones and even tsunamis. In Madagascar, rising sea levels and temperatures may overwhelm the Mahajamba Bay mangroves even before humanity has a chance to replace them with shrimp farms.
Monteverde Cloud Forest: This tropical rainforest some 1,700 meters above sea level in the volcanic mountains of central Costa Rica gets its name from living among permanent clouds. The humidity is often 100 percent. But as the warming climate drives those clouds further up and even off the mountainsides, their ascent is exposing the lower reaches of the to higher temperatures and drier conditions. That shift may mean the eventual end of the green mountains of Monteverde.
The Ross Ice Shelf: This in Antarctica covers 487,000 square kilometers and holds huge volumes of fresh water. It is also one of the fastest-warming regions on the entire planet, which puts it at risk of a meltdown like the collapse of the Larsen B ice shelf back in 2002. That collapse saw a chunk of ice more than 2,700 square kilometers—larger than Rhode Island—disintegrate in a matter of weeks.
Snows of Kilimanjaro: Despite being one of the largest volcanoes in the world, Kilimanjaro has a glacier at its summit. Like mountaintop glaciers across the globe—whether in Peru or New Zealand—the iconic and will disappear if global warming continues at its present pace. In fact, places like Glacier National Park in the U.S. may lose their namesake attractions soon.
Small island states: The small atolls that litter the Pacific face stronger storms like Typhoon Pam, which just . Sitting barely above sea level, these islands also face saltwater incursions into freshwater supplies—, Tonga and Ontong Java Atoll in the Solomon Islands—among other ill effects of swelling oceans as a result of global warming. It is not just Pacific isles that are under threat: low-lying islands like in the Indian Ocean face similar challenges.
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