Ecoclimax

Beneath the green folds of the Caucasus Mountains, where cliffs rise like ancient guardians, flows a small but storied river—the Agura. Or at least… it used to flow. Once known for its cascading waterfalls and emerald pools, the Agura River in Russia has now revealed a very different face: a stone kingdom carved by time and left exposed by months of drought. In this short video, you’ll witness a surreal transformation—what was once a gushing torrent is now a hushed, rocky canyon echoing with silence. Rising just 300 meters above sea level, the Agura begins near the Alek crest and winds its way for 10 kilometers to the Black Sea. Along the way, it passes through a narrow gorge tucked between Mount Akhun and the Eagle Cliffs—an area so picturesque it was one of the very first tourist destinations in Sochi, over a century ago. But today, climate change and dry spells are altering even these age-old landmarks. What happens when the water stops? Watch the video and witness nature’s quiet sh...

ClimateEx (Climate Explorer) is an interactive web application for around the globe exploration of spatiotemporal changes in climate by means of the Climate Similarity Search. The user selects a location in the world and the point in time, examines a climatogram corresponding to this selection, selects a target point in time, and issues a query. In response to the query, ClimateEx generates a worldwide similarity map with colors encoding a degree of similarity between a query climate and local climates at the selected target time. With ClimateEx you can explore spatial variability of present-day climate and inspect climate trends without direct references to the numerical values of climatic variables.

Climate change isn’t just a far-off environmental issue anymore — it’s rapidly becoming an economic one. While hurricanes, wildfires, and heatwaves often dominate the headlines, the quieter impact on regional economies is already underway. And by the end of this century, it could dramatically reshape which parts of the U.S. thrive and which struggle to stay afloat.   A research team led by Solomon Hsiang, Robert Kopp, Amir Jina, and others from institutions like the University of California, Berkeley and the University of Chicago created a county-level projection of total economic damage in the U.S. as a percentage of local GDP, based on continued high greenhouse gas emissions. The map below offers a detailed look at where those losses could be concentrated. On the map above, each county is colored based on how much of its economy is projected to be lost — or in some rare cases, gained — by the years 2080 to 2099. Southern states such as Florida, Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, ...

The map below shows 20 years of all-time temperature records from the 100,000 approved weather stations in the NOAA GHCN-Daily database. Each dot shows the highest or lowest min or max temperature ever recorded at a station. Around 40,000 all-time records were set in the last two decades, out of 500 million daily min and max entries. Source:  flourish.studio

White rocks are one of the most amazing canyons of Sochi (Russia). Astonishing rock formations and unique vegetation, preserved from the Tertiary period, attracts tourists from all over the world. Unfortunately, the insect (Cydalima perspectalis) killing the boxwood trees. This insect was unintentionally brought from China during the greening of the Olympic city.

Different types of birds take routes of widely varying lengths. Some round-trip migrations can be as long as 44,000 miles, equivalent to almost two round-the-world trips. Others are much shorter. Some birds even migrate on foot. Many cover thousands of miles and move back and forth between continents. To conserve energy, migrating birds often take direct—and dangerous—routes, which can expose them to storms, predators, and disorientation from perilous navigation conditions. Migrations that cut across deserts or open water are especially risky. On rare occasions, a storm front or band of rain intersects the birds, killing thousands and forcing an entire sky full of them to stop at the first land they encounter. Birdwatchers revel in these events (known as fallouts). Colorful warblers, orioles, and tanagers decorate every bush and provide eye-level views as they forage ravenously to recover from the difficult flight. Human activity over the past century has increased the hazards...