Climate change around the world

A look at the biggest climate change stories of our generation, from the Gulf oil spill, Cancun climate talks, and flooding in Pakistan.

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Smog and haze hover over Salt Lake City. The thick layer of smog lingering over Utah has fouled the state's mountain air so badly that health officials have warned people not to exercise outside and schools are keeping children inside for recess and sports. The smog is blamed on a weather phenomenon that pins pollution to the valley floors.

Brian Nicholson / AP

Smoke bellows from the chimneys of Belchatow Power Station, Europe's largest coal-fired power plant. Coal plants are one of the biggest contributors to global pollution.

Peter Andrews / Reuters

An abandoned ship is stuck in the solidified salts of the Oroumieh Lake, Iran. Protesters demanding greater environmental protections for one of the world's biggest saltwater lakes have clashed with security forces in western Iran. Oroumieh is on the shores of a lake of the same name about 370 miles northwest of the capital Tehran. Environmentalists and activists have been raising alarms for years that the lake is threatened by drought and aggressive agriculture policies.

Vahid Salemi / AP

Beijing's air-pollution index is regularly above the World Health Organization recommended maximum. This picture was taken less than 96 hours before the opening of the Olympic Games. Many athletes were worried about having to compete in Beijing's polluted air.

Bernardo de Niz / Bloomberg

Smog envelopes the skyline of Los Angeles. New auto emissions standards passed by the California Air Resources Board in 2004 required auto makers to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases by 25% for cars and light trucks and large trucks and SUV's by 2009. These new air regulations are intended to combat global warming making them the most stringent in the world.

David McNew / Getty Images

A snakelike pattern of car congestion on the way to downtown Los Angeles.

Chris Pizzello / AP

A village can be seen next to a river in a drought-affected farming area near the the northern Chinese city of Harbin, Heilongjiang Province in 2008.

David Gray / Reuters

Feb. 6, 2010

From left, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Chairman Rajendra Pachauri, Abu Dhabi Future Energy Co. Chief Executive Director Sultan Ahmed Al Jaber and Japan House of Councillors member Wakako Hironaka listen to a speaker at the Delhi Sustainable Development Summit in New Delhi.

Gurinder Osan / AP

Feb. 10, 2010

Near white-out conditions at the U.S. Capitol as employees try to clear snow from capitol stairs and walkways in Washington, D.C.

Linda Davidson / The Washington Post

March 18, 2010

Jill Ruchala and other Rainforest Action Network demonstrators stand in front of EPA headquarters to protest mountaintop coal mining.

Gerald Martineau / For The Washington Post

March 27, 2010

Local residents light up candles to mark the Earth Hour in Chengdu in southwest China's Sichuan province. Buildings in some 4,000 cities in more than 120 countries turned off lights for one hour to reduce energy consumption, marking the worldwide Earth Hour.

Feng Zi/Color China Photo / AP

April 16, 2010

The volcano in southern Iceland's Eyjafjallajokull glacier sends ash into the air just prior to sunset.

Brynjar Gauti / AP

April 21, 2010

This aerial photo taken in the Gulf of Mexico more than 50 miles southeast of Venice on Louisiana's tip shows the Deepwater Horizon oil rig burning.

Gerald Herbert / AP

May 25, 2010

Calving ice makes a splash at Margerie Glacier in Glacier Bay, Alaska.

Jim Mone / AP

June 23, 2010

U.S. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar watches as Michael Bromwich, director of the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement testifies during a Interior, Environment and Related Agencies Subcommittee hearing on Minerals Management Service reorganization in Washington. The hearing was in regards to reforms to the oversight of offshore oil and gas drilling.

Astrid Riecken / Getty Images

July 1, 2010

A man gathers wood from a destroyed home after Hurricane Alex hit the area in what is known as Playa Bagdad, about 22 miles east of Matamoros, northeastern Mexico, on the border with Texas. In 2010, Hurricane Alex ripped off roofs, caused severe flooding and forced thousands of people to flee coastal fishing villages.

Eduardo Verdugo / AP

July 1, 2010

Sergio Alvarez shovels seaweed off a boardwalk as the lingering effects of Tropical Storm Alex are felt along the Texas coast in South Padre Island.

Eric Gay / AP

July 4, 2010

Residents crowd in a swimming pool to escape the summer heat during a hot weather spell in Daying county of Suining, Sichuan province.

Stringer Shanghai / Reuters

July 20, 2010

The Obama administration has until Dec. 23 to decide whether to change the status of polar bears from "threatened" to "endangered" under the Endangered Species Act because of melting sea ice. Here a polar bear seen in the lower Yukon River near the village of Emmonak, Alaska.

Philomena Keyes / AP

July 22, 2010

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.), center, with Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.), left, and Director of the White House office of Energy and Climate Change Policy Carol Browner, talk to the media on Capitol Hill in Washington. Senate Democrats abandoned plans to pass an energy bill that caps emissions of carbon dioxide, saying Republicans refuse to support the measure.

Alex Brandon / AP

July 23, 2010

Ian Stehmeier with Boy Scout Troop 1407 from Chicago cool off in a fountain on the grounds of the Washington Monument during a hot summer day.

Mark Gail / The Washington Post

July 23, 2010

The temperature reached 104 degrees at the Northern Virginia Community College Manassas Campus on one of many hot summer days in 2010.

Tracy A. Woodward / The Washington Post

Aug. 10, 2010

A helicopter carries water before releasing it over a forest fire near the settlement of Kustarevka in Ryazan region, 211 miles southeast of Moscow.

Denis Sinyakov / Reuters

Aug. 24, 2010

Pakistani residents swim and float as they wait for an air drop of food by the Pakistan Army in their flooded near Thul in Sindh province, southern Pakistan.

Kevin Frayer / AP

Aug.25, 2010

In this 2010 photo provided by the Saint Gervais Les Bains townhall, workers stand on the Tete Rousse glacier, French Alps, as engineers started work to drain an immense lake that has built up under the Alpine glacier on Mont Blanc, an attempt to prevent a repeat of a flood that killed 175 people more than 100 years ago. Specialists are drilling into the glacier as part of preparations to slowly pump out the 65,000 cubic meters (2,275,000 cubic feet) of liquid believed trapped beneath the Tete Rousse glacier. The amount of water is equivalent to about 26 Olympic-size swimming pools.

P. Tournaire / AP

September 2010

A bleached colony of Montipora capitata coral is seen off Kure Atoll in the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands. Scientists say some warm waters caused some coral in the area to expel its algae and become "bleached" this summer but the corals overall escaped the widespread destruction suffered by corals off Indonesia and other parts of Southeast Asia.

Jason Helyer / NOAA via AP

Sept. 7, 2010

Environmental activist and author Bill McKibben and others sign a solar panel during a news conference at Unity College in Unity, Maine. McKibben and students planned to take the panel that once stood atop the White House, back to Washington in hopes of having President Obama reinstall it in an effort to promote solar energy.

David Leaming / AP/Morning Sentinel

Sept. 25, 2010

Silhouetted against the sky at dusk, emissions spew from the smokestacks at Westar Energy's Jeffrey Energy Center coal-fired power plant near St. Mary's, Kan.

Charlie Riedel / AP

Oct. 7, 2010

The president of the Maldives, Mohamed Nasheed, gets to work and installs solar panels on the roof of his official residence in 2010.

Courtesy of the Office of the President / Republic of Maldives

Oct. 23, 2010

Russian scientist Sergey Zimov demonstrates the emission of methane trapped under the ice of a Siberian lake near the town of Chersky, Russia. Gas locked inside Siberia's frozen soil and under its lakes has been seeping out since the end of the last ice age 10,000 years ago. But in the past few decades, as the Earth has gradually warmed, the icy ground has begun thawing more rapidly, accelerating the release of methane -- a greenhouse gas 23 times as powerful as carbon dioxide -- at a perilous rate.

Arthur Max / AP

Oct. 26, 2010

A fisherman hauls his catch from a hole in the ice near a research barge of the Northeast Science Station near Chersky, Russia. In summers the 20-bed barge takes students and researchers to the Pleistocene Park, a 40,000-acre wilderness in northern Siberia 25 miles upriver from the station. Russian scientist Sergey Zimov is trying to recreate conditions from the end of the Ice Age when this area was rich in wildlife and summer meadows. Zimov believes populating Siberia with grass-eating animals will regenerate grasslands, which are more effective at preventing the thaw of permafrost and slowing the emission of dangerous greenhouse gases.

Arthur Max / AP

Nov. 4, 2010

Fishermen navigate on Solimoes River near Manacapuru, in Amazonas state, northern Brazil. An intense months-long drought through November drained the mighty Negro river -- a tributary of the Amazon -- to its lowest since record keeping began in 1902, drying up the network of water that is the lifeblood of Brazil's huge Amazonas state.

Ricardo Moraes / Reuters

Dec. 5, 2010

World Wildlife Fund (WWF) activists light candles representing the earth as they demonstrate on the sidelines of the U.N. Climate Change Conference COP16 in Cancun. The conference in Cancun has far lower ambitions than last year's Copenhagen summit, which fell short of an all-encompassing deal to help slow floods, droughts, heatwaves and rising sea levels.

Jorge Silva / Reuters

Dec. 8, 2010

Environmental activists from Greenpeace demonstrate by holding images of world landmarks in the water during the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Cancun, Mexico. Experts said glaciers in southern South America and Alaska's coastal mountains have been losing mass faster and for longer than glaciers elsewhere in the world.

Eduardo Verdugo / AP

Dec. 10, 2010

Farmers across the U.S. South are contended with abnormally dry weather in 2010. Crops in dry fields baked during stretches of record-setting summer heat that scorched peanut fields, stressed cotton plants and stunted citrus fruit, such as with this cotton field in Lyons, Ga.

David Goldman / AP

2010

Bjargey Ólafsdóttir painted Red Polar Bear using red organic food dye on Langjökull Glacier, Iceland, the second largest glacier in Iceland.

Christopher Lund / For Earth 350.org

Featured Photo Galleries

Pranav Sivakumar, 12, of Tower Lakes, Ill., spells his word during the National Spelling Bee in Oxon Hill, Md.

National Spelling Bee, Buckingham Palace garden party, the ‘Soup Nazi’ and more in the day in photos

National Spelling Bee, Buckingham Palace garden party, the “Soup Nazi” and more.

U.S. actress and director Angelina Jolie speaks ahead of a screening of her new film 'In the Land of Blood and Honey' at the Foreign Commonwealth Office in central London, May 29, 2012. Angelina Jolie spoke on the Foreign Secretary's initiative on preventing sexual violence in conflict, ahead of the screening. REUTERS/Pool/Dan Kitwood

Eye on entertainment

Angelina Jolie, will.i.am, Larry Thomas, Nick Jonas, Adam Lambert, Bob Dylan and other celebrities.

Editor’s choice: Reader-submitted photos

Some of the Post’s top picks of snapshots taken and submitted by readers.

Novelist Toni Morrison laughs with U.S. President Barack Obama before being awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom at the White House in Washington, D.C., U.S., on Tuesday, May 29, 2012. The Medal of Freedom is the nation's highest civilian honor. Photographer: Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg *** Local Caption *** Toni Morrison; Barack Obama

Obama Honors Medal of Freedom Recipients

President Obama honored a diverse group of political and cultural icons.

Switzerland's Roger Federer returns the ball to Romania's Adrian Ungur during their second round match in the French Open tennis tournament at the Roland Garros stadium in Paris, Wednesday, May 30, 2012. (AP Photo/Michel Spingler)

French Open 2012: Novak Djokovic, Roger Federer, Victoria Azarenka advance to third round

The American tennis star lost in the first round of a Grand Slam event.

Camels rest at a watering hole outside the town of Aleg May 25, 2012. REUTERS/Joe Penney (MAURITANIA - Tags: ANIMALS SOCIETY)

Camels, tigers, turtles, a giant stag beetle and more in animal views

Camels, tigers, turtles, a giant stag beetle and more.

Henry, a calf, sustained a head wound and required stitches after being slashed over the weekend.

Farm animals attacked in Fairfax

A calf, two goats and a chicken were slashed over the weekend at Frying Pan Farm Park in Herndon.

ANNAPOLIS, MD- MAY 29: Graduates cheer as the Blue Angels fly over during the 100th anniversary of the United States Naval Academy Graduation and Commissioning Ceremonies in Annapolis, Maryland, on Tuesday, May 29, 2012. U.S Sec. of Defense Leon Edward Panetta gave the graduation address. (Photo by Nikki Kahn/The Washington Post)

U.S. Naval Academy graduation

Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta gave the commencement address at the ceremony.

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