Living on an island might sound wonderful. But what if you left for a trip and found you could never return? What if your home, and even the land it stood on, was gone forever? For people living in the Pacific Islands, this is really possible.

Why? Climate (气候) change. Climate change is causing the sea to rise. That's bad news for the Pacific Islands. Young people on the islands are even starting to wonder: Will they be the last generation (一代人)?

Not if the islanders have anything to do about it. These people are deeply connected to their homelands. The Pacific Islands are made up of 11 different countries: the Marshall Islands, Fiji, Samoa, and others. But now, those countries are working together. They're joining forces to fight climate change.

Why is climate change such a huge threat to this part of the world? Islands are low elevations (海拔). So they are among the first places influenced by rising sea levels. That's why countries of the Pacific Islands are working together to do their part.

But these are small countries. When it comes to climate change, can they make a big difference? They can, because most of the things that people on islands buy are brought by ships. This is very harmful to the environment. After all, ships put out almost 3 percent of the world's carbon emissions (碳排放). That makes climate change worse.

Pacific Islanders realize the problem. So, in 2019, six countries got together: Fuji, the Marshall islands, Samoa, Vanuatu, the Solomon Islands and Tuvalu. They came up with a plan. They agreed to cut carbon emissions from shipping by 40 percent by 2030. And by 2050, they expect zero-carbon shipping.

How will they pull this off? They plan to use some really cool carbon-free technologies. They'll make use of solar and wind energy.

Sea levels are rising, but hopes aren't sinking in the Pacific Islands.

Ever since Earth formed roughly 4.5 billion years ago, its climate has gone through a number of incredible changes.

All you have to do is look at images of the Jurassic Period (侏罗纪时期) to know that at one time, much of our planet was covered in extremely hot and humid jungle. Skip ahead a couple million years and you get to an ice age event, when global temperature experienced a huge drop. While many species were not able to deal with these changing climate patterns, others successfully adapted, and some are even still with us today. Now, as humanity pushes the planet closer to another extreme climate event, scientists are eager to find out how the world's species will react. The idea was highlighted in a study published on April 6 in the journal PNAS, which showed that between 1970 and 2010, open water species such as lobsters and fish had declined by about half in tropical marine zones across the globe because over the 40-year time period, sea temperatures in those regions had risen by roughly 0. 2°C.

The lower numbers aren't a sign of all the sea creatures dying off though. In fact, the scientists found some of them outside of their traditional habitats, meaning that if a species can migrate to cooler waters and adapt in a new environment, they will.

However, those movements aren’t always a good thing; species that can' t move, such as coral, which is fixed to the seabed, rely on the fish and other sea creatures to contribute to the natural food chain and stay healthy. Additionally, when a non- native species moves into a new area, it threatens to disrupt the ecosystem that already exists there.

Depending on the species, it can take anywhere from one generation to thousands and thousands of years to properly adapt, so the changes that have occurred in just the last 40 years are very troubling for scientists. As Sebastian Ferse, an ecologist at the Leibniz Centre for Tropical Marine Research, Germany, explained, “In geological history, this has occurred in the blink of an eye. To see such changes occurring so rapidly is something quite alarming.

NEW YORK (Reuters) — Global warming has cut about $5 billion worth of value from the world’s most commonly grown grains over 20 years, according to a new study.

Warming temperatures from 1981 to 2002 cut the combined production of wheat, corn and other crops by 40 million tons per year. “Contrary to what most people think, this study shows that warming over the past two decades has already affected global food supply. The effect is not a faraway thing,” said Christopher Field, a co-author on the study, the first to estimate how much global food production has already been affected by climate change.

Not every scientist agrees that agriculture is suffering from warmer temperatures. A UN report said warming is expected to turn the planet a bit greener by encouraging plant growth, but crops and forests may wilt beyond mid-century if temperatures keep rising.

Average global production for several of the crops suffered from warmer temperatures, with production dropping by about 3-5% for every 1°F increase, the study said. Average global temperatures increased by about 0.7°F during the study period, with even larger changes in several regions.

“If the past is an indication, agriculture will also suffer going forward,” Field said. “We expect future warming to continue to be a drag on grain production, like driving with the parking brake engaged.” The study said the cereal crops hit by global warming account for 55% of non-meat categories consumed by humans and they also contribute more than 70% of the world’s animal feed.

“Farmers can adapt to warmer temperatures by changing crop planting times, the varieties they grow, or the locations used for each crop,” Field said. “In the past farmers have been very adaptable to environmental challenges, but adaptation to warming can take years.”