Alaska is among the fastest-warming places on Earth, with its interior region warming the most statewide. A study by NCAR’s Shannon McNeeley looks at the vulnerability to climate change of native rural communities.

Like a creature from a hydrologic horror flick, Devils Lake, North Dakota, has been expanding off and on for 70 years, most dramatically from the mid-1990s onward. Some of its tendrils have blocked rail lines and roadways for years.

A study led by NCAR postdoctoral researcher Jia Hu and Julia Klein from Colorado State University looks at the relationship between plants, water, carbon, and climate on the Tibetan Plateau, which is warming at a rate twice that of the global average.

When climate change leaped into global consciousness more than 20 years ago, there was no doubt that sea levels would rise, but the main worry was how those rising seas would affect civilization, not on how the oceans themselves might be transformed.