The Heat Will Kill You First: Life and Death on a Scorched Planet

by Jeff Goodell

But a vanishing Arctic is not just a symbol of our changing climate. It has real impacts on the lives of virtually everyone on the planet. A warmer Arctic alters the thermodynamic balance of the Earth’s atmosphere, changing the pressure gradients that create heat waves, and altering rainfall patterns, especially in Europe and Asia, which will have big implications for food production. Rapidly melting ice sheets in the Arctic also accelerates sea-level rise, inundating coastal cities around the world, stranding billions of dollars’ worth of real estate and forcing tens of millions of people to move to higher ground. A warming Arctic is also speeding up the melting of permafrost, releasing vast quantities of methane, a greenhouse gas that is twenty-five times more potent than CO2. More methane means more warming, which will release still more methane—when scientists talk about a looming climate catastrophe, this is one of the scenarios that worries them most.