Earth: Your Fragile Planet (PHOTOS)—October 2012 to March 2013

A farmer carries buckets past a partially dried-up pond after fetching water in Huangni village of Meishan, Sichuan province, on March 28, 2013. A drought that has lingered since last October has affected about 23.7 million people in Yunnan, Gansu and Sichuan provinces, causing economic losses of more than $1.1 billion, according to civil affairs authorities on Thursday.

Photo: Reuters

Artist Matt Hope pushes his air filtration bike near his studio on a hazy day in Beijing on March 26, 2013. Using an IKEA perforated garbage can, moped helmet, fighter-pilot breathing mask, wheel-powered generator and home air filtration system, Hope built a "breathing bicycle" as a way of protecting himself from air pollution. While pedaling, electricity is generated for the power to activate the system to filter out haze and provide the rider with clean air. According to the U.S. embassy monitor, the air quality is classified as "very unhealthy." Since January 2013, Beijing has been blanketed by a cloud of smog. On January 12, for example, the air pollution in the city was so awful that it scored a 755 on the U.S. EPA-designed 0 to 500 scale. For some perspective, below 25 is considered a safe level by the World Health Organization.

Photos: Petar Kujundzic/Reuters

Goats graze on a field next to the turbines of Czech CEZ wind park, Europe’s largest on land, in Fantanele and Cogealac villages, about 155 miles east of Bucharest on February 8, 2013. Plans by Romania’s government to cut support for renewable energy producers could undermine one of the few economic growth areas in the European Union’s second poorest state. Lured by profit-generating “green certificates,” foreign-owned firms have ploughed billions of euros into wind, solar, biomass and hydro-power projects, helping offset the impact of government budget cuts and the euro zone debt crisis. But while the renewable indulgence has brought down wholesale power prices in many countries, subsidies have led to rising prices for consumers as the costs are passed down. 

Photo: Bogdan Cristel/Reuters

Residents walk past foam from industrial waste floating on the polluted Tiete River in Pirapora do Bom Jesus, 35 miles northwest of Sao Paulo, Brazil, on March 7, 2013. In 2010, when similar white detritus choked the river, Malu Riberio, a local environmentalist, told National Geographic that the foam is created when water mixes with phosphate and phosphorous, two ingredients found in industrial detergent.

Photo: Paulo Whitaker/Reuters

A girl looks up as she stands at a dried well in a village of Weining county, Guizhou province, on March 16, 2013. More than one million people in Guizhou and Gansu provinces are facing a drinking water shortage due to two lingering droughts, according to Xinhua News Agency. The dry weather and high temperatures have affected 417,800 people, 131,700 livestock and 68,000 hectares of crops.

Photo: China Daily/Reuters

A bulldozer is used to clean garbage from the Bagmati River ahead of the Shivaratri festival, at the premises of Pashupatinath Temple in Kathmandu, Nepal, on March 4, 2013. Hindu holy men from Nepal and India come to this temple to take part in the Shivaratri festival, which occurred on March 10. Waterways choked with plastic detritus aren't the city's only environmental problem—the air is pretty awful, too. A 2012 study conducted by researchers at Yale University found that Nepal was third-to-last among 132 countries in terms of progress made against combatting air pollution.

Photo: Navesh Chitraker/Reuters

Cardboard versions of New York's Statue of Liberty, the Sydney Opera House, Paris' Eiffel Tower, Rio de Janeiro's Christ the Redeemer, London's Big Ben, Cairo's Great Pyramid of Giza, Mexico's Angel of Independence, Agra's Taj Mahal and Beijing's Temple of Heaven stand in the ocean at the Gaviota Azul beach in Cancun on December 8, 2010. Greenpeace staged a performance sinking the world's best known landmarks in the ocean as climate talks heated up at the annual United Nations Climate Change Conference. Not much by way of meaningful reduction of greenhouse gas emissions was accomplished at the two-week conference, but a speech from then-President Felipe Calderon of Mexico stands out. Likening climate change to a malfunctioning airplane, Calderon said: "And all the passengers are responsible for the aircraft, and we're squabbling about these matters. Whether the guilt lies with those in the tourist class or those sitting up front in first class and the plane continues to go down. It's as if we were in a truck on a winding road and the driver has had a heart attack, and we're all on the edge of hitting a tree, going over into a ravine, squabbling again. I think, friends, somebody has to take control of the aircraft or put on the brakes."

Photo: Gerardo Garcia/Reuters

On March 11, 2013, a local resident and a dog walk near a ship brought ashore by the March 11, 2011, tsunami and earthquake in Kesennuma, Miyagi Prefecture. With a minute of silence, tolling bells and prayers, Japan marked the second-year anniversary of the earthquake and tsunami that killed thousands and set off a nuclear crisis shattering public trust in atomic power and the nation’s leaders.

Photo: Kyodo/Reuters

A farmer carrying a hoe walks past a dried-up pond in Shilin Yi Autonomous County of Kunming, China on February 28, 2013. The country's drought relief authority has said that about 600,000 people are facing shortage of drinking water amid severe drought that hit southwest China's Yunnan Province for the fourth straight year. Yunnan, Shaanxi and Gansu provinces face the worst drought among the western regions of the country, with a total of 2.11 million hectares of arable land being affected. 

Photo: Stringer / Reuters

Officials dump a Chinese-made T-69 armoured tank into the Gulf of Thailand, near the southern Narathiwat province on August 9, 2010. More than 25 decommissioned Thai-army tanks were dumped and now form artificial corals that improve the marine ecosystems and increase fish stock in the area. 

Photo: Surapan Boonthanom/Reuters

A runner wears a gas mask as he takes part in the second “Guangzhu Runs” at the Olympic Forest Park in Beijing, on February 24, 2013. About 100 people joined this event, which required them to run wearing only their underwear for 2.2 miles, as a way to promote environmentally friendly lifestyles. On Tuesday, January 29, 2013, the air index at the U.S. Embassy in Beijing hit 517—or roughly 20 times worse than the safe levels set by the World Health Organization.

Photo: China Daily/Reuters

Activists protest in front of the Hale Boggs Federal Building on the first day of the civil trial over the Deepwater Horizon oil rig spill in New Orleans, Louisiana, on February 25, 2013. Nearly three years after a Deepwater well rupture killed 11 men, sank a rig and spewed four million barrels of oil into the Gulf of Mexico, BP and the other companies involved are about to face their day in court.

As the trial began, details of a settlement leaked to The New York Times:

The plan, worth a total of $16 billion, would limit the fines paid by BP under the Clean Water Act to $6 billion, a proposal that could help reduce its tax liability, one person briefed on the plan said Sunday, speaking on the condition of anonymity.

BP would also pay $9 billion in penalties to cover damages to natural resources as well as the cost of restoration, that person said. The remaining $1 billion would be set aside in a fund that could be tapped if unanticipated environmental damages related to the spill developed.

In November 2012, BP reached a settlement with the Justice Department and agreed to pay $4.5 billion in fines and penalties. It was the largest single criminal fine and biggest total criminal resolution in U.S. history.

Photo: Jonathan Bachman/Reuters

A worker from the Ministry of Public Health takes a sample of water from Ypacarai Lake, a popular summer swimming area for residents of Asuncion, Paraguay. On February 12, 2013, the lake was closed down by government officials due to high levels of pollution. The culprit? Contamination from leather tanneries located near the shore, contributing to cases of diarrhea, vomiting and headaches in residents nearby. 

Photos: Jorge Adorno/Reuters

In this February 18, 2013 photograph, children walk along the Estero de Paco tributary in Manila, Philippines. The 1.8-mile tributary was one of the most polluted in the city a few years ago, but now shanty homes have been replaced with tree-lined boardwalks, and water-treatment machines nestle amid plants. “We are happy living here now,” said Evelyn Quitala, a local resident, to Yahoo. “It’s like living in a sub-division. When you wake up it is breezy, and there is a sunset, so you really feel like you are in a beautiful sub-division.” Still,  the waters remain  polluted. Experts say it will likely take decades for the Pasig River and all its 47 tributaries to be revived.

Photo: Ted Aljibe/AFP/Getty Images

A man jumps over debris from a home after a forest fire did its damage in Valparaiso, about 75 miles northwest of Santiago, Chile, on February 15, 2013. More than 75 homes have been burned and more than 20 people injured due to multiple forest fires in the city, but there have been no reported cases of deaths, say local authorities.

Photos: Eliseo Fernandez/Reuters

James Heard surveys the damage to a neighbor's home, which was destroyed after a tornado hit in Adairsville, Georgia, on January 30, 2012. Tornadoes were reported in four states and killed two people, including one in Adairsville, as an Arctic cold front clashed with warm air, producing severe weather over a wide swath of the nation. Just how cold did it get? On January 23, the low temperature in Rouyn, Quebec, was -45 Fahrenheit.

Photos: Tami Chappel/Reuters

A man saunters through farmland polluted with oil near Yenagoa, the capital of Nigeria's oil state of Bayelsa, on November 26, 2012. Despite billions of dollars worth of oil flowing out of southeast Nigeria, life for the majority of Niger Delta inhabitants remains unchanged. Most people live in modest iron-roofed shacks and rely on farming or fishing. Generally, their only interaction with the oil industry is when they step over pipelines in the swamps—or when a spill blights their landscape.

Photo: Akintunde Akinleye/Reuters

Protesters lie on a pedestrian crossing during a flashmob event in a shopping area of Taipei, China, in this February 1 photograph. The group held the event in order to promote awareness for global warming, according to the organizers. The Chinese characters on the boards read, "Save Antarctic. Young people rise up." A nation of 1.3 billion people, China is the world's largest emitter of greenhouse gases, contributing nearly a quarter of current global emissions.

Photo: Pichi Chuang/Reuters

Lightning flashes around the ash plume above the Puyehue-Cordon Caulle volcano chain near Entrelagos, Chile. The volcano in the Puyehue-Cordon Caulle chain, dormant for decades, erupted in the south-central part of the country on June 4, 2011, spitting ash over six miles into the sky, as winds fanned it toward neighboring Argentina, and prompted the government to evacuate several thousand residents. The temperature of the nearby Nilahue River rapidly rose to 113 degrees Fahrenheit, killing an estimated 4.5 million fish.

Photos: Carlos Gutierrez/Reuters

Two hundred feet.

That's about the average distance people in Beijing, China, can see ahead of them before their vision is blurred by a thick blanket of gray and brown smog. On Tuesday, January 29, for example, the air index at the U.S. Embassy in Beijing hit 517—or roughly 20 times worse than the safe levels set by the World Health Organization.

The country's January boom in air pollution has, as one might expect, set record numbers of people to the hospital. "A pediatric clinic in downtown Beijing has treated a record 9,000 children this month, mostly flu, pneumonia, tracheitis, bronchitis and asthma patients," reports China Daily.

It is against this filthy backdrop that the above photograph makes sense—those four cans aren't filled with soda, they're pumped full of so-called clean air. This week, Chinese multimillionaire Chen Guangiao organized the tongue-in-cheek campaign to urge the government to deal with the country's air problems in a real and tangible way. Guangbiao says that his cans contain air from far-flung and pristine regions of China— Xinjiang in the northwest and Taiwan, off China's southeast coast.

Photo: Barry Huang/Reuters

A tree grows through abandoned train tracks in Hans-Baluschek-Park outside Berlin, Germany. Once a marshalling yard for freight trains, the 18-hectare park was converted to a nature preserve in 1996. Old relics from the railway days were made into art objects for incorporation into the park. The park boasts an impressive record on the biodiversity front: It is home to 30 bird species, 57 spider species, and more than 350 plant types.

But back to that train track tree. Roughly 400 billion of its brothers and sisters live, breathe, sway, stand tall, foil erosion, and even fight crime on our third rock from the sun. Still, there aren't enough trees on our planet, not with huge swaths of the Amazon rainforest being clear cut each day. So roll up your sleeves and do your planet a solid: Plant a tree.

Photo: whimster-photography.com

On August 9, 2005, Greenpeace activists staged this single-word protest against deforestation in the Amazonian rainforest town of Claudia, in the Mato Groso State. Once home to the highest rate of deforestation in the world, Brazil has done an about-face when it comes to clear-cutting the towering trees that scrub carbon dioxide from our atmosphere. In November 2012, the country reported that its deforestation levels had fallen to the lowest point since 1988. Sixty-three percent of the rainforest's 2.4 million square miles are in Brazil. According to satellites run by Brazil’s National Institute for Space Research, or INPE, an estimated 4,656 square kilometers of forests were cleared in the 12-month period, compared to 6,418 square kilometers in the previous 12-month period. “I consider this fact one of the few positive environmental news stories the planet had this year,” Izabella Teixeira, Minister of Environment, told the Associated Press.

Photo: Bruno Domingos File/Reuters

A cyclist passes graffiti on a sunny winter day in Vienna on January 22, 2013. Yes, it might be bone-chillingly cold in your neck of the planet this time of year, but the next time you've got a check to deposit or a grocery to fetch, consider ditching your car and replacing it with your bike. A short four-mile trip keeps 15 pounds of pollutant out of the air we breathe. Multiply that by the hundreds of thousands—or dare we hope, millions of cyclists—and, just like that, we've biked ourselves some progress. Do your planet some good, and pledge to ride to work at least one day a month.

Photo: Heinz-Peter Bader/Reuters

A woman stands in her food stall in Jakarta's flooded business district on January 17, 2013. Heavy monsoonal rains triggered severe flooding in large swathes of the Indonesian capital this week, with many government offices and businesses forced to close because staff could not get to and from work. Weather officials warned the rains could get worse over the next few days, and media reports said that thousands of people in Jakarta and its satellite cities had been forced to leave their homes because of the torrential downpours.

Photo: Enny Nuraheni/Reuters

A woman wears a mask as she does her morning exercise outdoors in Fuyang, Anhui province, China, in this January 14, 2013 photograph. Earlier this week, as hazardous air pollution hit many parts of the country, China's environmental watchdog ordered greater efforts to issue early warnings for air quality. Business Insider likened the pollution wave to a "20th century environmental disaster novel," adding that "flights are cancelled, roads are blocked with pile-ups, and emergency rooms are packed with residents gaslping for air like doomed carp pulled from a local lake."

Photo: China Daily/Reuters

An activist looks out from an aerial walkway as preparations are made to prevent land clearing for the construction of a bypass at Crowhurst, near Hastings, in southeast England, in this January 11, 2013 photograph. About 50 protestors—who have set up tree huts and dug tunnels—say that the development would wipe out a dozen 300- to 400-year old trees. The project is a $150 million road linking Bexhill to Hastings. Said one protestor to the Daily Mail, “I try to dig an oval-shaped hole which will hopefully support itself, it was perfected by the Vietnamese in the Vietnam War, and I'm willing to risk my life.”

Photo: Luke MacGregor / Reuters

Clouds roll over destroyed homes, almost two months after steroid-storm Sandy ravaged the Breezy Point area of Queens, in this December 27, 2012 photograph. The storm caused up to $25 billion of damage along the Eastern United States, in addition to killing 85 people. Earlier this week, President Obama signed into a law a $9.7 billion bill to pay flood insurance claims from Sandy. "The law increases the borrowing authority of the Federal Emergency Management Agency. FEMA had warned that it was set to run out of money without additional dollars from Congress," according to the Associated Press. The House has yet to act on a larger, more comprehensive Sandy aid package. Republican leaders did not bring the bill to the floor before the last session of Congress adjourned.

Photo: Lucas Jackson/Reuters

Investigators inspect a port where ships are stranded in ice, in Jinzhou, Liaoning province in this January 5, 2013 photograph. Temperatures in China have plunged to their lowest in almost three decades and are cold enough to freeze coastal waters and trap 1,000 ships in ice. What, dare you ask, is the cause of such an extraordinary stretch of frigidity? Why, climate change—of course! "The national meteorological administration said China is seeing dropping temperatures partly because of south-moving polar cold fronts, caused by melting polar ice from global warming," reports The Weather Channel. "It said the air is moist and likely to dump heavy snow in China, Europe and North America."

A farmer harvests rice next to the artist Suharyanto Tri's statue, entitled Planting Brain, at Nitiprayan village in Bantul, near the ancient city of Yogyakarta in Indonesia. The photo was snapped on December 27, 2012. Tri's work is a part of an outdoor sculpture exhibition called Last Harvest, which includes works from 30 artists who are voicing their concerns over diminishing agricultural land.

Globally, humanity has reached peak farmland—which, oddly, isn't necessarily a bad thing. As reported by Reuters, the recently released study “Peak Farmland and the Prospects for Sparing Nature” goes so far as to say that “a geographical area more than twice the size of France will return to its natural state by 2060 as a result of rising yields and slower population growth.”

Photo: Dwi Oblo/Reuters

"An unexpected side-effect of the 2010 flooding in parts of Sindh, Pakistan, was that millions of spiders climbed into the trees to flee the rising flood waters," writes photographer Russell Watkins of the image he snapped two years ago, which he later submitted to the 2011 National Geographic Photography Contest. "Because of the scale of the flooding and the fact that the water took so long to recede, many trees became cocooned in spiders webs." The monsoon, while not directly caused by climate change, is part of a larger planetary trend, reports Time. "We do know that India, like the rest of the planet, has gotten hotter over the past six decades as man-made greenhouse gases have warmed the atmosphere. All other things being equal, that should lead to more precipitation—a hotter atmosphere means more evaporation and can hold more water. For the monsoons, the fact that the land is heating up faster than the oceans should actually draw in more moisture, which in turn should mean stronger monsoons." Click here to support clean, renewable energy.

Photo: Russell Watkins/National Geographic Photo Contest

Pierre Calleja, manager of French firm Fermentalg, specializing in ichthyology, checks microalgae bred in his laboratory in Libourne, southwestern France, in this December 11, 2012 photo. Calleja announced to have successfully tested a third generation of biofuel, a new fuel developed from microalgae, commonly known as algae-sourced biofuel or algofuel, on a standard car engine without modification. As our planet races to the so-called climate fiscal cliff, we'd all be wise to take a moment and sign this pledge to support clean, alternative fuels. 

Photo: Regis Duvignau/Reuters

The wooden road runs out for this cyclist on Lake Brunner, near the western coast of New Zealand. "I reached this pier one foggy morning and I found this moment was like no other," writes photographer Mohd Nadly Mohd, of the image he submitted to the 2012 National Geographic Photography Contest. Mohd's trip was for sport, but taking even one day a month to bike to work is worth your time. Not only does a ride enhance your life and health, but a short four-mile trip also keeps 15 pounds of pollutant out of the air we breathe. Multiply that by the hundreds of thousands—or dare we hope, millions—of people pedaling to work today, and we biked ourselves some progress. Do your planet some good, and pledge to ride to work at least one day a month.

(Photo: Mohd Nadly Mohd/National Geographic Photo Contest)

A stray dog stands on a garbage dump at the seafront in Sidon, southern Lebanon in this June 9, 2012 photo. The dump, located near schools, hospitals and apartment blocks in Lebanon's third biggest city, has partially collapsed into the Mediterranean Sea on more than one occasion. So the next time you think it's too much trouble to recycle that can of Diet Coke, that pair of AA batteries, or that old smartphone, think twice: It might end up halfway around the world in this dump. Please, recycle—the future of the only planet your grandchildren will ever call home depends on it.

Photo: Ali Hashisho/Reuters

In this December 5 photograph, Jimmy Rider delivers an eight-foot Christmas tree on a trailer attached to his bicycle. The two-wheeled transference from tree farm to doorstep is part of his Ever-Green Delivery service in Somerville, Massachusetts. Approximately 30 million Christmas trees are chopped down and sold in the U.S. alone each year. While we'd love to see each and every one of them stay rooted to the ground—so, you know, they can scrub carbon from our ever-warming globe—it is an eco-friendly idea for a chopped evergreen to be delivered via bicycle, as opposed to a gas-guzzling SUV. If Jimmy Rider can bear a Massachusetts winter and pedal trees up and down the streets of Somerville this holiday season, why can't you—even for one day—ride your bike to work?

Photo: Brian Snyder/Reuters

An aerial photograph depicts an illegal mine in the tropical woods just south of Venezuela on November 17, 2012. In the triangle that connects Venezuela, Brazil, and Guyana, a growing number of illegal gold and diamond prospectors—or garimpeiros—dream of changing their lives overnight by finding a huge mineral bonanza. Sadly, so-called striking it rich comes at a cost: the destruction of rainforests. Jungles are the of the world’s most vital ecosystems, yet every second a swath of rainforest equivalent to one football field is slashed and burned. The rainforest is not only home to 50 percent of the Earth’s plants and animals, but it also provides 20 percent of the world’s fresh water and oxygen.

Help us fight deforestation right here, right now: plant a tree.

Photo: Jorge Silva / Reuters

"I was up in the air in an helicopter, taking images for the community and suddenly I saw one tree surrounded by thousands of spruces and I got only one shot in this perfect light," writes Mats Almlof, in this submission to the 2012 National Geographic Photography contest. Our spinning blue marble is home to roughly 400 billion trees. Even at that robust 12-digit figure, scientists estimate that there aren't enough to scrub out the carbon toxins our fossil-fueled lifestyle pumps into the atmosphere every day. Still, why not do the best we can for our planet and plant a tree? Or two? 

Photo: Mats Almlof/National Geographic Photography Contest

Talk about jaw-dropping. Known to the locals as Churun Meru, Venezuela's Dragon Falls, seen in this May 2011 photograph, is located about 10 miles south of famous Angel Falls in the same gorgeous valley. Say what you will about his politics or his personality, but President Hugo Chavez deserves at least a modicum of credit for reducing Venezuela's deforestation rate by 47 percent since 1999. In fact, wooded areas now account for more than 47 hectares, which is more than half of the country's land. Click here to help us plant 10,000 trees.

Photo: Dmitry Moiseenko/AirPano.ru

This tulip field in Anna Paulowna, Holland, photographed on April 25, 2011, looks like something out of The Wizard of Oz—or a box of crayons. Each spring the Dutch landscape is transformed into a kaleidoscope of colors, as the country's 10,000 hectares of tulip fields come to life in full purple, yellow, red, pink and orange strips. More than three billion tulips are grown annually—two-thirds of which are exported to the United States and Germany. As much love as the Dutch have for their tulips, the same cannot be said for the country's once-robust wind industry. Last fall, Reuters reported that arguments erupted across the country "over the high cost and maintenance of sea-based turbines, as well as complaints from residents about unsightly land-based models. In the small town of Urk, for example, the residents filed a lawsuit saying that 30-meter tall wind turbines will spoil their view. "If we have wind turbines here this old picture will be destroyed," said the town's mayor. "We are also concerned about the safety and noise."

Click here to support sustainable energy.

Photo: bruxelles5/Flickr

A photographer takes pictures as water pours from twin river outlet tubes during an experimental high flow release from the Glen Canyon Dam in Page, Arizona, on November 19, 2012. The maximum release from the dam will reach approximately 42,300 cubic feet per second, according to the Interior Department. The release is part of a long-term protocol announced in May by U.S. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar to meet water and power needs and resolve problems with downstream sediment and non-native fish predation on the Colorado River below the dam. 

This year, the worst drought in half a century covered more than two thirds of the contintental United States, with the USDA declaring that more than 1,800 counties in 38 states were natural disaster areas.

Click here to sign the Water Bill of Rights, which would ensure that Americans have the right to safe, clean, and accessible drinking water at replenishable levels. 

Photo: Bob Strong/Reuters

Of this undated image of the south face of El Capitan in Yosemite Valley, photographer Tony Williams writes: "All that is required to surprise and delight is to go out early on a winter morning in Yosemite and keep your eyes open wide." Williams submitted the photograph to the 2012 National Geographic Photography contest. 

Yes, winter may be knocking on your front door, but that doesn't mean a family trip to your closest national park should be out of the question.

Find that parka, dust off that old sleeping bag, and pledge now to visit your closest national park.

Photo: Tony Williams /National Geographic Photography Contest

Located 50 kilometers from Luang Prabang, Laos, the Huang XI waterfall is nothing short of stunning. "I arrived early in the morning long before the first tourist set a foot into the crystal clear water," wrote photographer Thomas Hagenau in his submission to the 2012 National Geographic Photographic contest. "So many cascades where the water runs above. But you have to pick the right time in the year. Summertime when the waterlevel is low it`s a good time. I saw a lot of different waterfalls but this one was one of the best."

For a touch of beauty closer to home, why not pack up the family mini-van and take a trip to one of America's national parks?

Pledge to do so here.

Photo: Thomas Hagenau /National Geographic Photography Contest

In this undated shot, Adam Adkins photographs a massive supercell storm as it advances on his car in eastern Colorado. "The storm dropped softball sized hail on my car and totaled it," writes Adkins, in a submission to the 2012 National Geographic Photography contest. While the majority of climate scientists are in agreement that global warming means bigger storms occurring more often, it is hard to pinpoint, they argue, that climate change causes any one specific storm. "The impacts of climate change on any weather events will likely only be seen in the statistics—more rainfall that occurs in intense bursts, more overall water vapor, more heat waves, less cool nights," Gavin Schmidt, a climate scientist with NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, wrote in an email to LiveScience in 2011. "But the combination of events that lead to the tornado swarms we've seen are both rare and complex, and to ask climate scientists to pronounce definitively on them the instant they happen is just asking for trouble."

Photo: Adam Adkins/National Geographic Photographic Contest

Of the planet's 400 or so billion trees, this Japanese maple in the Portland Japanese Gardens stands out for its vibrant, vivacious coloring. "I tried to bring a different perspective of this frequently photographed tree," wrote photographer Fred An, who submitted the image to the 2012 National Geographic Photography Contest. Remember this about trees, folks: In an ever-warming world, we need every single one of them—colorful or not—to scrub carbon from the atmosphere. Click here to help us plant 10,000 trees.

Photo: Fred An/National Geographic Photography Contest

A traffic sign reading “slow down” is seen between islands of Kuna Yala in Panama on September 4, 2012. Climat-change-induced rising ocean levels and years of coral reef destruction have combined to submerge the Caribbean island. Once rare, flooding is now so widespread that the Guna people have started to abandon ancestral lands for an area within their semi-autonomous territory on the east coast of the mainland.

Click here to calculate your carbon footprint.

Photo: Carlos Jasso/Reuters

As a weakened but still dangerous Frankenstorm Sandy surges northward to Canada and beyond, the northeastern United States is left to pick up the pieces of the estimated $50 billion natural disaster. Hardest hit by Sandy's fury was the New Jersey coastline, including Atlantic City, where flooding caused "incalculable, the worst I've ever seen" damage according to the state's governor, Chris Christie. It will, to be sure, take days and weeks to ascertain the true extent of her ecological reckoning. Still, for every home, be it in the Garden State or elsewhere, that was tragically swept away in her swelling storm surge, there are a few scant dwellings, like this oceanfront property on Long Beach Island, New Jersey, that brazenly played chicken with Mother Nature—and somehow lived to remain standing another day. Click here for 5 simple ways you can help the folks affected by Sandy.

Photo: Courtesy Elaine Atlee

Located in the Great Barrier Reef of the Whitsundays, Heart Reef is a beautiful arrangement of coral that has naturally formed into the shape of a heart. Located in Hardy Reef, Heart Reef is best experienced from the air by helicopter or seaplane, since visitors are unable to snorkel or dive there due to its protected status.

With over 3,000 individual reef systems, coral cays, and hundreds of picturesque tropical islands, the reef contains an abundance of marine life.

But sadly the world's largest coral reef “is declining faster than ever and coral cover could fall to just 5 percent in the next decade . . . Researchers from the Australian Institute of Marine Science (AIMS) in the northeastern city of Townsville say Australia's Great Barrier Reef has lost half of its coral in little more than a generation.”

Click here and pledge to be an ocean hero.

(Photo: Grant Faint/The Image Bank)

Perhaps nowhere else on our warming planet is climate change more readily apparent than in the Arctic. In northeastern Greenland, for example, the average yearly temperatures have shot up "4.5 degrees in the past 15 years, and scientists predict the area could warm by 14 degrees to 21 degrees by the end of the century." The locals are already feeling the effects: dog sledding and winter fishing is no longer safe in many areas because the ice is too thin. In this undated photograph, submitted to the 2012 National Geographic Photo Contest, Frank Walley captures the mirroring effect of icebergs in the harbor in Ilulissat, Greenland. Calculate your carbon footprint.

(Photo: Frank Walley/National Geographic Photo Contest)

"A worker covered with soap walks to take a bath after working at an open cast coal field at Dhanbad district in the eastern Indian state of Jharkhand on September 20, 2012," reports Reuters. "With oil and gas output disappointing and hydropower at full throttle, Asia's third-largest economy still relies on dirty coal for most of its vast energy needs. About 75 percent of India's coal demand is met by domestic production and, according to government plans, that won't change over the next five years."

Click here to figure out your own personal carbon footprint.

(Photo: Ahmad Masood / Reuters)

Oil stained Spanish paratroopers carry a bucket filled with fuel oil during cleaning work on the Camelle coast, in the Spanish northwestern region of Galicia, on December 11, 2002. Almost 50,000 ton of oil leaked into the Atlantic when the Prestige broke up off the north coast, polluting thousands of miles of coastline nearly ten years ago. It took lawyers nearly eight years to investigate the disaster and the case took two additional years to reach trial, which began on October 15, 2012, in northern Spain.

Click here to calculate your carbon footprint.

(Photo: Miguel Vidal/Reuters)

A Romanian volunteer of 'Green Agent' NGO looks at a half deforested hill in Piatra Craiului National Park on May 12, 2010. In the National Park Piatra Craiului, in the heart of the Carpathians, some 300 hectares of forest were cleared between 2004 and 2007, according to the NGO Agent Green, which has denounced this as a 'crime'. More than 180,000 hectares have been cleared illegally in Romania since 1990. 

Text PINES to 77177 to plant a tree and help us reach our goal of 10,000.

(Photo: Daniel Mihailescu / AFP / Getty Images)

A river runs through a valley near Moose Pond, Northwest Territories on August 21, 2012. Canada's Prime Minister Stephen Harper announced the establishment of the Naats'ihch'oh National Park Reserve on Wednesday earlier in the week.

Click here to learn how you can best plan a trip to your favorite national park.

(Photo: Adrian Wyld / Reuters)

Elmira, New York native Jessica Stansfield poses for a photo below an enormous uprooted tree after a tornado hit her hometowon on New York, July 26, 2012. Severe thunderstorms unleashed heavy rain and strong winds across parts of the Midwest and Northeast all week—grounding hundreds of flights and leaving tens of thousands of people without power. On October 2012 survery of Americans found that 71 percent of U.S. citizens linked the extreme weather of the summer of 2012 to climate change.

Text PINES to 77177 to plant a tree and help us reach our goal of 10,000.

(Photo: Adam Fenster / Reuters) 

A home is seen protected from encroaching floodwaters by a levee near Yazoo City, Mississippi on May 18, 2011. Floodwater released from a key Mississippi River spillway surged through the Louisiana bayou and levees protecting the state's two biggest cities held as river flows neared their peak. Weeks of heavy rains and runoff from an unusually snowy winter caused the Mississippi River to rise, flooding thousands of homes and 3 million acres of farmland in Mississippi, Tennessee and Arkansas—evoking comparisons to historic floods in 1927 and 1937.

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(Photo: Eric Thayer / Reuters)

The crew of the U.S. Coast Guard Cutter Healy, in the midst of their ICESCAPE mission, retrieves supplies for some mid-mission fixes dropped by parachute from a C-130 in the Arctic Ocean on July 12, 2011. Scientists punched through the sea ice to find waters richer in phytoplankton than any other region on earth. Phytoplankton, the base component of the marine food chain, were thought to grow in the Arctic Ocean only after sea ice had retreated for the summer. Scientists now think that the thinning Arctic ice is allowing sunlight to reach the waters under the sea ice, catalyzing the plant blooms where they had never been observed.

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(Photo: Kathryn Hansen of NASA / Reuters)

Windmills are reflected in a car mirror at a wind farm in Palm Springs, California on February 9, 2011. California aims to slow climate change by putting a price on carbon—a low, low starting price. The program is the last, keystone step in a controversial half-decade push to green the state's business for the good of the planet and the economy. According to the American Wind Energy Association: “The U.S. wind industry now totals 48,611 megawatts (MW) of cumulative wind capacity through the end of the first quarter of 2012. There are over 8,900 MW currently under construction involving nearly 100 separate projects spanning 31 states plus Puerto Rico. The U.S. wind industry has added over 35 percent of all new generating capacity over the past five years, second only to natural gas, and more than nuclear and coal combined.”

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(Photo: Lucy Nicholson / Reuters)