Climate change is global, but its causes and consequences are uneven.
Human emissions have reshaped the climate system. Rising temperatures, shifting precipitation patterns, and declining sea ice reveal a planet changing unevenly across space.
The Arctic is disappearing before our eyes.
Sea ice is one of the most visible signs that the planet is warming — and it's shrinking faster at the poles than anywhere else on Earth. This is already happening now.
By mid-century, summer ice loss is severe.
Under a high-emissions path, the Arctic loses most of its summer sea ice within decades. Ice that took thousands of years to form disappears in a single lifetime.
By 2090, the Arctic looks almost unrecognizable.
What was once a frozen ocean becomes open water for much of the year. The loss of ice means the ocean absorbs more heat — accelerating warming everywhere else.
It's not just heat. Rain is changing too.
Climate change rewrites where rain falls and when. Some regions are drying out — threatening crops and drinking water. Others face floods more often. Neither is easy to live with.
Dry places get drier. Wet places get wetter.
By the 2050s, the pattern becomes clearer. Already-dry regions in Africa, the Middle East, and southern Europe face growing water scarcity. Tropical regions swing between drought and extreme flooding.
Near the equator, rainfall swings become extreme.
By 2090, equatorial regions see some of the most dramatic changes. For countries where most people depend on rain-fed agriculture, this threatens food security at a scale that no adaptation plan can fully absorb.
Countries that caused the least pollution face the worst rainfall disruption.
Each dot below is a country. The further right, the more CO₂ it has burned historically. The further up or down, the more its rainfall is projected to change by the 2090s. There is no clear pattern — the countries most responsible for emissions are not the ones bearing the worst water stress.
The places warming fastest are not the richest countries.
Look at the map. The deepest reds — the most extreme warming — fall over sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia, and small island nations. These are places with the fewest resources to adapt, and the least historical responsibility for the problem.
In some places, it will become dangerous just to go outside.
Wet-bulb temperature measures heat combined with humidity. Above a certain threshold, the human body cannot cool itself through sweat — even in the shade. Millions of people in tropical regions will face these conditions for weeks at a time.
The people least responsible are suffering the most.
Gold countries are the world's biggest historical emitters. Violet countries face the highest climate impacts. They barely overlap.
The countries that burned the most fossil fuels are not the ones getting the hottest.
Each dot is a country. High historical emissions do not predict high future warming. Many of the dots facing the worst projected temperatures sit near zero on the emissions axis — they barely contributed to the problem, but they are paying the price.
So who actually caused this?
Centuries of burning coal, oil, and gas by a handful of wealthy nations built up the CO₂ that is now warming the entire planet. This is not an accusation — it is the historical record. The same countries now have the most resources to act.
Who has emitted the most CO₂ — historically and today?
Biggest historical emitters (all time)
Biggest emitters today
The future is not fixed. It depends on what we choose.
Scientists model three different futures based on how much the world reduces emissions. The gap between the best and worst case is nearly 3°C of extra warming by 2100 — the difference between a difficult future and a catastrophic one.
Countries cut emissions sharply this decade, switch to clean energy, and reach net-zero around 2050. Warming stays close to the Paris Agreement target. Hard, but possible.
Some climate policies take effect but fossil fuels phase out slowly. Warming exceeds 2°C. Most regions face significant disruption — but some of the worst outcomes are avoided.
Fossil fuel use keeps expanding. Emissions roughly double by 2100. Extreme heat, flooding, and ecosystem collapse become widespread. The world your children inherit looks nothing like today's.
Everything you've seen so far is global. Now make it personal.
Click your country on the map. You'll see how much it is projected to warm, how rainfall will change, and how much it contributed to the problem. The numbers will tell you clearly: who bears the burden, and who caused it.
Click any country to see its climate future.
What the data tells us.
The Arctic is already gone — in slow motion.
Sea ice that took millennia to form is disappearing within a single lifetime. Under a high-emissions path, the Arctic becomes an open ocean in summer before 2100.
Rain is becoming unreliable for billions.
Dry regions are getting drier. Wet regions face more extreme floods. For the hundreds of millions who depend on rain-fed agriculture, this is an existential threat — not a weather inconvenience.
The burden falls on those least responsible.
Sub-Saharan Africa produced roughly 4% of historical CO₂ emissions yet faces an estimated 30% of global climate-related harm. The countries warming fastest are not the ones that caused it.
The future is still a choice.
Nearly 3°C separates the best- and worst-case scenarios by 2100. That gap is determined entirely by decisions being made right now — about energy, policy, and who gets to decide.
Dig deeper. Explore any scenario, variable, or region.
The story above shows the big picture. Now explore it yourself — compare any two decades, switch between temperature, rainfall, and sea ice, and trace any region on the map to pull out its trend line.
Temperature change maps
Degrees warmer or cooler vs. pre-industrial baseline (before 1900)
2050s vs 2090s