You might think that “global warming” means nothing more than a rise in the world’s temperature. But, rising sea levels caused by it have resulted in the first evacuation(撤离) of an island nation—the citizens of Tuvalu will have to have their homeland.

During the 20th century, sea level rose 8-12 inches. As a result, Tuvalu has experienced lowland flooding of salt water which has polluted the country’s drinking water.

Paani Laupepa, a Tuvaluan government official, reported to the Earth Policy Institute that the nation suffered an unusually high number of fierce storms in the past ten years. Many scientists connect higher surface water temperatures resulting from global warming to greater and more damaging storms.

Laupepa expressed dissatisfaction with the United States for refusing to sign the Kyoto Protocol, an international agreement calling for industrialized nations to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions(导致温室效应的气体排放), which are a main cause of global warming. “By refusing to sign the agreement, the US has effectively taken away the freedom of future generations of Tuvaluans to live where their forefathers have lived for thousands of years,” Laupepa told the BBC.

Tuvalu has asked Australia and New Zealand to allow the gradual move of its people to both countries.

Tuvalu is not the only country that is vulnerable(易受影响的) to rising sea levels. Maumoon Gayoon, president of the Maldives, told the United Nations that global warming has made his country of 311,000 an “endangered nation”.

Old Problem，New Approaches

While clean energy is increasingly used in our daily life, global warming will continue for some decades after CO₂emissions (排放) peak. So even if emissions were to begin to decrease today, we would still face the challenge of adapting to climate change. Here I will stress some smarter and more creative examples of climate adaptation.

When it comes to adaptation, it is important to understand that climate change is a process. We are therefore not talking about adapting to a new standard, but to a constantly shifting set of conditions. This is why, in part at least, the US National Climate Assessment says that, “There is no ‘one­size fits all’ adaptation.” Nevertheless, there are some actions that offer much and carry little risk or cost.

Around the world, people are adapting in surprising ways, especially in some poor countries. Floods have become more damaging in Bangladesh in recent decades. Mohammed Rezwan saw opportunity where others saw only disaster. His not­for­profit organization runs 100 river boats that serve as floating libraries, schools, and health clinics, and are equipped with solar panels and other communicating facilities. Rezwan is creating floating connectivity (连接) to replace flooded roads and highways. But he is also working at a far more fundamental level: his staff show people how to make floating gardens and fish ponds to prevent starvation during the wet season.

Elsewhere in Asia even more astonishing actions are being taken. Chewang Norphel lives in a mountainous region in India, where he is known as the Ice Man. The loss of glaciers (冰川) there due to global warming represents an enormous threat to agriculture. Without the glaciers, water will arrive in the rivers at times when it can damage crops. Norphel’s inspiration came from seeing the waste of water over winter, when it was not needed. He directed the wasted water into shallow basins where it froze, and was stored until the spring. His fields of ice supply perfectly timed irrigation (灌溉) water. Having created nine such ice reserves, Norphel calculates that he has stored about 200,000 m³of water. Climate change is a continuing process, so Norphel’s ice reserves will not last forever. Warming will overtake them. But he is providing a few years during which the farmers will, perhaps, be able to find other means of adapting.

Increasing Earth’s reflectiveness can cool the planet. In southern Spain the sudden increase of greenhouses (which reflect light back to space) has changed the warming trend locally, and actually cooled the region. While Spain as a whole is heating up quickly, temperatures near the greenhouses have decreased. This example should act as an inspiration for all cities. By painting buildings white, cities may slow down the warming process.In Peru, local farmers around a mountain with a glacier that has already fallen victim to climate change have begun painting the entire mountain peak white in the hope that the added reflectiveness will restore the life­giving ice. The outcome is still far from clear. But the World Bank has included the project on its list of “100 ideas to save the planet”．

More ordinary forms of adaptation are happening everywhere. A friend of mine owns an area of land in western Victoria. Over five generations the land has been too wet for cropping. But during the past decade declining rainfall has allowed him to plant highly profitable crops. Farmers in many countries are also adapting like this — either by growing new produce, or by growing the same things differently. This is common sense. But some suggestions for adapting are not. When the polluting industries argue that we’ve lost the battle to control carbon pollution and have no choice but to adapt, it’s a nonsense designed to make the case for business as usual.

Human beings will continue to adapt to the changing climate in both ordinary and astonishing ways. But the most sensible form of adaptation is surely to adapt our energy systems to emit less carbon pollution. After all, if we adapt in that way, we may avoid the need to change in so many others.

Our planet is covered in water. Just 2.5 percent of that water, however, is fresh. Of that, only about one third is liquid. The rest is locked up as ice. Yet we depend on the fresh water available for everything.

As climate changes, though, water available changes too. Water, climate and weather are connected in the water cycle. Scientists use supercomputers to explore the complex ways that climate change is changing the water cycle. They have found that as climate warms, the atmosphere holds more water: about 4 percent more for every 1.8 degrees Celsius. From 2002 to 2017, a satellite mission called Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment called GRCE tracked Earth's water resources from above. A pair of twin satellites was able to "weigh" earth's water by measuring how much the planet pulls it. If the amount of surface water or even groundwater changes, so does the pull of gravity at that location. That gravitational pull is affected by changes in mass (质量). As the first satellite passed over an area, differences in gravity slightly changed the distance between the two satellites. Scientists translate those data into water or ice mass. Then they compare them with historical data to measure changes in places where water and ice are distributed over time.

Data from computers and satellites agree. That is, climate change is changing the availability of water around the world. In South Africa and many regions, droughts are becoming more common. In other areas, such as California and Europe, changing rainfall patterns lead to river flows peaking earlier in the year, followed by water shortages. Meanwhile, the average rainfall in the United States has actually increased by 5 centimeters (2 inches) since 1895.