MOTHERBOARD

Your team has found the city of Giza, Egypt. You gaze out across three tall pyramids built as royal tombs more than 4,000 years ago. As your team is crossing the desert to get to the base of largest Pyramid, the stones beneath your feet begin crack. An archaeologist tells you, “The pharaohs called these the temples of a million years; they were meant to last forever. Recently, erratic weather, like extreme heat, causes bricks to expand and crack and now rain can fall so furiously that it makes dents in the mud bricks. We are trying to find and document everything . . . If worse comes to worse we will have a record of what’s been lost”

🛩️ to

Giza

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30ºN, 31ºW

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Along the famous Kamehameha Highway there are many cracks in the road. One chunk of road has fallen into the ocean. Unusually high tides, large waves, and increasingly intense tropical storms are starting to erode the island infrastructure and coastal land.

In effort to lead change, the state of Hawaii set a goal to stop using energy that releases carbon dioxide by 2045. Solar and wind energy are planned to be the largest sources of clean energy in the future.

✈️ to

Oahu

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21ºN, 157ºW

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You arrive in the mountain town of Sa Pa, Vietnam ready to hike through beautiful rice terraces. You notice new hotels being built, many new cars in town, and everywhere there are ads selling exciting activities for tourists. There are four times as many visitors here compared to 5 years ago. The new hotels are built in areas without, enough drinking water or proper sewer systems to contain their waste and the increased traffic is releasing more pollution into the air.

In Vietnam, climate change is hitting ethnic minorities that depend on farming the hardest. Increasing temperatures have disrupted normal weather patterns leading to times of drought and causing periods of more intense rains that erode soil. Crop failures are becoming more common. Families already on the brink are struggling to get by.

✈️ to

Sa Pa

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23ºN, 103ºE

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“Guten tag!” you hear someone say as you get off the bus in Zugspitze, Germany. You are high up in the mountains, bundled up in warm clothes. A German recommends you see the beautiful glaciers now.

Scientists predict that many of the glaciers will not be here in twenty years. Melting glaciers around the world are thought to cause about 25 percent of the rise in sea level.

The loss of glaciers also hurts the tourism and skiing industries and reduces the water supply for local towns.

🚌 to

Zugspitze

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47ºN, 11ºE

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Your team arrives in New Zealand. You drive toward Waikawa Beach, but as you get close it looks like the sea has flooded the sandy beach “We can’t drink the water anymore because it is full of salt” you hear someone say next to you. She is an artist who uses the art inspired by her people, the Moari, to encourage people to protect the environment.

⛵ to

Waikawa Beach

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44ºS, 170ºE

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Ugandan activist Vanessa Nakate teaches children about the environment and has helped youth install solar powered lights and efficient stoves, and plant trees around the country. Vanessa says floods have been destroying communities in Uganda more often. She hopes to leave a better environment as her legacy.

🚌 to

Kampala

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0°N 32°E

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Your team gets off a bus high in the mountains of Sichuan 四川 Province in China. A guide tells you about the huge snow leopard he spotted last week.

Snow leopards

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live in the mountains where they hunt animals like

blue sheep

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. He said he used to seem them often, but lately it has been getting warmer and snow leopards have been disappearing. A recent study shows that high mountains are warming even faster then the rest of the planet. This will result in 30 percent of the snow leopards habitat to vanish as the forests change in response to warming. Melting mountain glaciers also cause about 25 percent of the rise in sea level.

🚌 to

四故娘山

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31°N 103°E

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The sun never rises this time of year. Here, polar bears wait at the edge of sea ice for seals that come up for air. Winter is an important time to get food. The last few summers the sea ice melted so much that polar bears had a hard time finding places to hunt for food. In recent years, the polar bear population in this area has dropped by 40 percent.

🛩️ to

Taloyoak

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69°N,93°W

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You arrive in Teluk Intan, Malaysia a city built on a river near where it empties into the sea. It is very warm here all year long. The city is so flat that during very high tides parts of the city floods. Some Malaysian scientists think that the city will be fully underwater by 2050. Melting of land ice near the poles is partly to blame. Another major cause is warming of the water. As water warms it spreads out, taking up more space.

🚌 to

Teluk Intan

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4°N 101°E

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You have arrived in Venice. Many parts of Venice have canals of water that are like their streets. People get around on boats instead of cars! Even though it has always had lots of water, Venice is struggling with more and more days where storms make the water so high that the buildings flood.

Melting of land ice on Greenland and Antarctic is largely to blame for higher water levels as are more intense storms caused by the higher temperatures of the air, land and water.

Another major cause is warming of the water. As water warms it spreads out, it takes up more space. As global warming speeds up, some scientists think this expansion of sea water will become the biggest cause of sea level rise.

The city has just finished building a huge barrier to keep high water out during big storms.

⛵ to

Venice

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45°N 12°E

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You arrive on the Great Barrier Reef on the east coast of Australia. Your team goes scuba diving with a group of Australian youth and marine scientists who are working together to protect the coral reefs. You see the most colorful fish, corals, and even octopus. An elder from the Munbura people, who traditionally cared for these lands and waters, said they all had to work together because warmer water has been killing the coral and many fish that depend on the coral.

Efforts are underway to stop nearby water pollution which damages coral and other marine life and to pursue policies that result in less greenhouse gas emissions.

✈️ to

Great Barrier Reef

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18°S 147°E

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Cape Town recently ran out of fresh water after several years without rain. Increases in temperature have changed the pattern of rainfall in this part of the world.

🚌 to

Cape Town

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33°S 18°E

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You arrive in Colombia. A giant storm has damaged your boat. Storm damage has increased as sea levels start to rise and warming of the Earth means that there is more heat energy to drive severe storms.

A recent study by NASA ( they study climate too!) suggests that extreme storms will increase by 60 percent by 2100 if we do not slow or stop global warming.

⛵ to

Buenaventura

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3°N 76°W

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You have arrived in Copenhagen, Denmark. Copenhagen is a very bicycle-friendly city. 9 out of 10 people here own a bicycle and bikes are regularly used to get around instead of cars.

Switching from getting around in cars to bikes, walking and public transit could reduce the greenhouse gases released by transportation by 40 percent.

🚌 to

Copenhagen

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55°N 12°E

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You land in Singapore. Singapore is a city that is also its own nation. You meet world famous Architect Dr. Cheong Koon Hean at an outdoor food stand. She tells you about how she has helped make living in a big city greener by building beautiful gardens with solar panels in the city and on top of skyscrapers.

Architects that use more sustainable materials and designs are able to reduce their buidlings’ greenhouse emissions by 50 percent or more.

✈️ to

Singapore

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1°N 103°E

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You arrive in Paris, France and immediately visit a pastry shop for croissants and hot chocolate. Paris is known as a food, fashion, and art paradise. Paris is also known for its fantastic subway system, the Paris Métro. At certain times cars are even banned from the city to reduce air pollution.

In places like the United States, cars and trucks are responsible for about 20 percent of greenhouse gas emissions.

✈️ to

Paris

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48°N 2°E

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The city of Suva is located on one island, out of the 333, that make up Fiji. 16 year old activist AnnMary Vikatoria Raduva shows visitors the ruins of a town that was abandoned after it kept flooding during storms and king tides.

The larger waves, high winds and rain can cause erosion of land on the coast.

AnnMary says the government plans to move 40 towns to higher ground. She is dedicated to helping protect the land and sea around Fiji through education and activism.

⛵ to

Suva

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17°S 179°E

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You arrive in Mexico City, one of the largest cities in the world. A few years ago the skies looked like

this (click)

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because of air pollution, but lately the city has more blue sky days because they have switched to cleaner energy sources and more people are using public transit instead of cars.

Large cities are often better at reducing greenhouse gases compared to suburbs and smaller towns because people in cities usually live much closer together in smaller spaces and are able to walk and use transit rather than drive.

✈️ to

Mexico City

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19°N 99°W

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Follow in the steps of the Vikings who sailed to Iceland over 1100 years ago. Strangely, Iceland is mostly green and its neighbor, Greenland, is mostly covered in ice. Greenlands melting icesheet has contributed to 40 percent of the current rise in sea level. Smaller Iceland is also losing what ice it does have. Click

here (click)

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to see a memorial to their loss. Read the

inscription (click)

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on the memorial.

🛩️ to

Reykjavik

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65°N 18°W

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You arrive on the island of Bali in Indonesia. You meet sisters Melati and Isabel Wijsen at a local school. A few years ago the sisters noticed plastic trash all over the beaches and were able to convince Bali’s governor to ban plastic bags. Aside from plastic waste polluting beaches, a lot of carbon dioxide is released when plastic is produced. While you are speaking to the sisters, they ask: “What is something that you want to help to change?”

⛵to

Bali

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8°S 115°E

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This is where we are now. In recent years, Seattle has been experiencing more periods of extreme weather including heat waves in the summer. Sea level rise threatens homes and buildings near the water.

🛩️ to

Seattle

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48°N 122°W

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