1 . Rising sea levels, extremes of weather and more droughts and floods will all destroy the world’s energy systems as global warming picks up its pace, a new report has found.

Energy companies are quite often cited as part of the problems of climate change, generating the lion’s share of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions, amounting to around 60% of the total. But they will also suffer as global warming worsens.

Many large plants are particularly threatened by floods because they lack protection from sudden storms. Electricity distribution networks are also likely to be affected.

Christoph Frei, secretary general of WEC, said governments must play a key role in ensuring the world’s important infrastructure is protected. Climate change is certain to affect the energy sector. We need powerful policy frameworks to unlock the long-term investments that are urgently needed to deliver the future we want. Leadership will be required at all levels.

Despite efforts to increase energy efficiency, the amount of energy used globally is still set to rise. But the effects of this could be reduced if companies spend more energy on renewable and low-carbon forms of energy.

However, there is little sign so far that energy companies around the world have got this message. Fossil fuels continues to dominate new investment in energy generation capacity, according to the International Energy Agency. Besides, we have failed in creating a global price for carbon emissions, which could help to reverse this trend.

Another key focus must be energy distribution networks, according to the report, as new technology can be used to make them “smart”, saving energy by distributing energy from generators to users in more intelligent ways.

“The time has come to get real about the challenges facing the energy sector,” Frei said.

Philipes Joubert, executive chairman of WEC’s global electricity initiative and former president of Alstom Power, said large companies are taking note. “Leading businesses in this sector are increasingly realising that business as usual is no longer acceptable.”

5 . One of the ocean’s noisiest creatures is smaller than you’d expect — snapping shrimp (鼓虾). They create a widespread background noise in the underwater environment, which helps them communicate, protect their homes and hunt for food. When enough shrimp snap (发出噼啪声) at once, the noise can be deafening.

Aran Mooney, a biologist at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, suggested that with increased ocean temperatures, snapping shrimp will snap more often and louder than before. This could raise the background noise of the global ocean. “They make a sound by closing a claw so fast. This makes a bubble (泡泡) and when that bubble bursts, it makes that snapping sound,” said Mooney.

Mooney discovered a strong relationship between warmer waters and more frequent snapping shrimp sounds after experimenting with the shrimp in tanks in the lab and by listening to the shrimp in the ocean at various water temperatures. “As the temperature rises, the snap rate increases,” he said. This makes sense because shrimp are essentially cold-blooded animals, meaning their body temperature and activity levels are largely controlled by their living environment. “We can actually show in the field that not only do snap rates increase, but the sound levels increase as well.”

How the louder snapping shrimp would affect or benefit the surroundings remained to be seen. “We know that fish use sound to communicate,” Mooney said. “If the environment gets noisy, it has the possibility to influence that communication. That’s something we have to follow up on.” There is also the possibility that the change of snapping shrimp affects machines humans use to discover mines, which could lead to unpleasant results.

6 . The streets, sidewalks and roofs of cities all absorb heat during the day, making some urban areas across the United States up to 6 degrees Fahrenheit hotter than rural ones during the day—and 22 degrees F hotter at night. These “urban heat islands”   can also develop underground as the city heat spreads downward, beneath the surface. And basements, subway tunnels and other underground infrastructure also constantly bleed heat into the surrounding earth, creating hotspots. Now the underground heat is building up as the planet warms.

According to a new study of downtown Chicago, underground hotspots may threaten the very same structures that emit the heat in the first place. Such temperature changes make the ground around them expand and contract (收缩) enough to cause potential damage. “Without anyone realizing it, the city of Chicago’s downtown was deforming,” says the study’s author Alessandro F. Rotta Loria, a civil and environmental engineer at Northwestern University.

The findings, published in Communications Engineering, expose a “silent hazard (危险)” to civil infrastructure in cities with soft er ground — especially those near water — Rotta Loria says. “There might have been structural issues caused by this underground climate change that happened, and we didn’t even realize,” he adds. While not an immediate or direct danger to human lives, this previously unknown effect highlights the impacts of a lesser-known component of climate change.

Similar to climate change above the surface, these underground changes occur over long periods of time. “These effects took decades, a century, to develop,” Rotta Loria says, adding that elevated underground temperatures would likewise take a long time to dissipate (逐渐消失) on their own.

But other researchers interviewed for this story all say this wasted energy could also be recycled, presenting an opportunity to both cool the subsurface and save on energy costs. Subway tunnels and basements could be updated with technologies to recapture the heat. For example, water pipes could be installed to run through underground hotspots and pick up some of the heat energy.

7 . Disastrous floods in eastern Libya killed at least 5,100 people, according to local authorities. The disaster comes after a series of deadly floods around the world this month, from China to Brazil to Greece. In every case, extremely heavy rain was to blame.

The enormous loss of life on many continents strengthens the extreme danger caused by climate-driven rainstorms, and the need for better warning systems and basic facilities to protect the most vulnerable (脆弱的) populations.

Climate change makes heavy rain more common, even in dry places where the total amount of rainfall is small. That’s because a hotter atmosphere can hold more moisture. Everyday rainstorm, as well as bigger storms such as hurricanes, are increasingly dangerous as a result. In Libya, a storm called Daniel swept in from the Mediterranean over the weekend and resulted in a jaw-dropping 16 inches of rain in just 24 hour, according to the World Meteorological Organization. That is far too much water for the ground to absorb, especially in a dry climate where the soil is dry and is less able to suck up water quickly.

The massive amount of rain caused widespread flash flooding, and damaged at least one dam near the coastal city of Derna. That released torrents of water powerful enough to sweep away entire neighborhoods. In Brazil, flooding from a hurricane last week killed more than 20 people and left a large piece of southern Brazil underwater. Cities around the world are hurrying to improve their basic facilities to handle increasingly common heavy rain.

The disasters in the last two weeks also stress the vulnerability to climate change of people who are not wealthy or who live in places that are at war. While extreme rain has caused floods around the world recently, the number of the death is significantly higher in places where there isn’t money or political will to maintain basic facilities and enough weather warning systems.

8 . As climate change causes ocean temperatures to rise, one of Greenland’s previously most stable glaciers is now reducing at an unheard-of rate, according to a new study.

The study was led by researchers at The Ohio State University. The team found the truth. Between 2018 and 2021, Steenstrup Glacier in Greenland reduced about 5 miles, thinned by about 20% and doubled in the amount of ice that went into the ocean. According to the study, such a rapid change is so extraordinary among Greenland’s ice formations that it now places Steenstrup Glacier in the top 10% of glaciers that contribute to the entire region’s total ice discharge.

Steenstrup Glacier is part of the Greenland Ice Sheet, a body of ice that covers nearly 80% of the world’s largest island, which is also the single largest contributor to the global sea rise from the cryosphere (冰冻圈), the portion of Earth’s ecosystem that includes all of its frozen water. While the region plays a crucial part in balancing the global climate system, the area is steadily reducing as it loses hundreds of billions of tons of ice each year because of global warming.

As far as scientists knew, Steenstrup Glacier had been stable for decades. It was hardly influenced by the rising temperatures that had influenced so many other regional glaciers, likely because of its special position in shallow water. It wasn’t until Thomas Chudley, lead author of the study, and his colleagues collected observational and modeling data from previous remote sensing analyses on the glacier that the team realized Steenstrup Glacier was likely experiencing melting due to anomalies (反常现象) in deeper Atlantic water.

According to Chudley, the current situation in Greenland serves as an early warning sign for possible future events in West Antarctica within the next few centuries. He also expressed the importance of conducting direct observations in the fjord to understand the reasons behind the changes observed in Steenstrup Glacier.

10 . Mont Kilimaniaro is among Africa’s most breathtaking sites, but hard times have come to the plains below. Death is all around and it’s tragic to behold. The cause is a lack of rainfall in a land where on the contrary there is still plenty of water. Underground springs fed by snowmelt from the mountain, still create swamps(沼泽). The problem is that the absence of rain means grasses and other essential plants are not growing, and the animals that depend on them are dying from a lack of nutrition.

The elephant herds here are among the most successful in the continent. They’re closely monitored and conservationists have given them names. But even these great beasts are dying too, what is for the smaller ones?

A drought induced hunger. Since the start of June almost 60 elephant deaths have been recorded. More than half calves were killed by starvation due to their mothers’ failure to produce milk. Tolstoy, a male, was named after Russian. He was 5-year-old at the time of his death. And he was one of the greatest tuskers like one of the greatest alive.

Very sad story. There are some of the last relatively undisturbed elephants in Africa. While poaching(偷猎)has been destructive elsewhere，these animals have been largely spared. Right now, however, the problem they face here is a drier climate which poses the greatest threat to their survival.

There are plenty of people here who care deeply about these elephants, but the sad truth is that conservationists are powerless to stop the dying. Only fresh rainfall and new plant growth can do that. We are waiting for the rains. If the rains don’t come before the end of the year, the death rate will only increase.