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A Planet That Is Forgetting Its Shape At sunrise, Arabia’s dunes breathe—intact, self-regulating, timeless. Yet just beyond, concrete corridors and grids cleave habitats honed over millennia, a pattern mirrored from Amazonian forests to African savannas. Nearly 75% of Earth’s terrestrial surface has been altered by human systems (IPBES, 2018), eroding not only biodiversity but also the ecological “memory” that landscapes need to regenerate. Deserts are pushed into cities, for

A landscape is never just a backdrop; it is a living record of Earth’s forces. It shifts through three core elements of geomorphology: the landforms we see (river valleys, beaches, and uplands), the processes that shape them from the outside, such as wind, water, and climate, and the forces that work from within the planet, like tectonics and volcanic activity. Over time, these interacting forces create an evolving terrain. Because geomorphology is tightly connected to hydrol

Everyone knows that the Amazon is the largest rainforest in the world, often called the “lung of the earth.” But how many of us have heard that the war-torn African continent is also the home of the “second lung of the earth,” known as the Congo Basin? The Congo Basin The Congo Basin is the second-largest rainforest in the world after the Amazon. It spans across six African countries: Cameroon, the Central African Republic (CAR), the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), Eq

The Sahara Desert, covering over 9.2 million square kilometers across 11 countries between the Atlantic Ocean and the Red Sea, is the largest hot desert on Earth. While often perceived as a uniform expanse of sand, the Sahara is a region of considerable ecological and geological diversity. Its landscape includes dunes (ergs), solid rock plateaus (hamadas), gravel plains (regs), volcanic massifs, mountain ranges such as the Ahaggar and Tibesti, and some of the driest hyper-ari

When night falls across the world’s deserts, a transformation unfolds. The air, thick with shimmer by day, cools until silence settles on dunes, stony plateaus, salt flats, and rocky escarpments stretching impossibly to the horizon. For the untrained eye, deserts are nature’s blank pages: empty, lifeless, and unyielding. But scientific eyes know better: deserts, in all their forms, are vital theaters of survival, innovation, and history, teeming with secrets waiting to be rev

When we imagine the climate crisis, our minds drift toward the cinematic: the roar of a cyclone flattening a city, the orange glow of a wildfire consuming a forest, or floodwaters sweeping away cars. We have been trained to fear the spectacle. Yet, some of the most profound devastation is unfolding without a sound. It is happening grain by grain, crack by crack, in a process known as "slow violence." This is the force of weathering, the relentless grind of heat, salt, wind,

When we imagine the climate crisis, our minds drift toward the cinematic: the roar of a cyclone flattening a city, the orange glow of a wildfire consuming a forest, or floodwaters sweeping away cars. We have been trained to fear the spectacle. Yet, some of the most profound devastation is unfolding without a sound. It is happening grain by grain, crack by crack, in a process known as "slow violence." This is the force of weathering—the relentless grind of heat, salt, wind, a

(A Nature Insights Therapy Session) Welcome back, eco-enthusiasts. Today, Nature Insights is hosting an emergency therapy session, not for humans, but for something far more stressed: the Weather . This month, as complaints about “unusual weather” flood our timelines faster than our streets, we decided to do the responsible thing: book Weather a therapy session. Not to fix it, but to finally listen. Once predictable, politely seasonal, and rarely invited into policy discu

There was a time when my small talks began with: “The weather is nice today, no?” I don’t say it so casually anymore. I think I am privileged, so my weather is still “nice.” I can regulate it with fans, heaters, AC, or simply step indoors. But is the weather nice for everyone? Back in my childhood I remember that Bangladesh’s summers meant load-shedding. Generators were rare, IPS was a luxury, fans stopped mid-rotation like paused moments. Even then somehow, the heat was t

Climate change and food insecurity are two of the most pressing sustainable development challenges of our time. Yet agricultural policy keeps chasing long-term climate change targets while the real threat to farmers and rural communities goes largely unaddressed. That threat is the wild swings in weather: sudden floods wipe out the season’s rice, heatwaves scorch wheat before it ripens, and droughts turn soil to dust almost overnight. These shocks destroy harvests, spike food

Weather is a complicated, interconnected system that goes way beyond the local prediction. The distinction between the transient weather conditions and the more stable context of climate is inherent: whereas weather can change within hours, climate changes within decades. One of the most impressive examples of this difference is the El Nino-Southern Oscillation, or ENSO a natural and periodic process within the Pacific Ocean, that alternates between warm (El Nino) and cold (L

When the cold season hits Bangladesh in November-February every winter, the skies in Dhaka, Chattogram, Narayanganj, Gazipur and other large cities of the country appear perfectly familiar and at the same time terribly threatening. The cityscape is regularly blanketed with a heavy and gray blanket. It might seem to the careless eye an air of mist or fog, but this haze of seasonal fog is much darker. It is smog, a heavy layer of air pollutants that suffocates millions of peopl

On a winter night at high latitude, the sky feels close, almost tangible. People travel thousands of kilometers for this moment, eyes lifted, breath visible, waiting for the aurora to appear. Yet long before the Sun sends charged particles racing toward Earth, the outcome has already been decided much closer to the ground. The weather, not space, is the gatekeeper. Auroras are born far above the clouds, where solar particles collide with Earth’s magnetic field and excite oxy

Glaciers play a foundational role in sustaining ecosystems, regulating hydrological cycles and supporting livelihoods, particularly by supplying fresh water to downstream populations. Yet this natural system is now under severe threat. Climate change, largely driven by human activity, is accelerating glacier melt at an unprecedented pace. Over the past two decades, global glacier mass has declined sharply, with the most rapid losses recorded in five of the last six years. Sci

For this issue’s interview, we are honored to have Dr. Rashed Chowdhury, Applications Scientist - Water, Climate, and Society. Dr. Rashed Chowdhury is a climate scientist and research faculty member at Arizona State University (USA) who works at the intersection of water, climate, and society. His research is driven by a strong interest in applying climate science to real-world challenges. He is a 2021 U.S. Fulbright Teaching Scholar and a postdoctoral researcher at the I

Danmarks Naturfredningsforening has actively contributed to the creation of national parks like National Park Thy (pictured), the first of its kind in Denmark. Over the decades, the Society’s campaigns also led to the protection of iconic landscapes such as Møns Klint and Mols Bjerge Denmark’s Danmarks Naturfredningsforening, or Danish Society for Nature Conservation, was founded on April 21, 1911, in Copenhagen with a pioneering vision. Unlike earlier scientific circles that

Image created by Author Climate change and food insecurity are two of the most pressing sustainable development challenges of our time. Yet agricultural policy keeps chasing long-term climate change targets while the real threat to farmers and rural communities goes largely unaddressed. That threat is the wild swings in weather: sudden floods wipe out the season’s rice, heatwaves scorch wheat before it ripens, and droughts turn soil to dust almost overnight. These shocks dest

The Climate Finance Vulnerability Index ranks 188 countries according to both their vulnerability to hazards and their financial resilience. There was a time when my small talk began with: “The weather is nice today, no?” I don’t say it so casually anymore. I think I am privileged, so my weather is still “nice.” I can regulate it with fans, heaters, or AC or simply step indoors. But is the weather nice for everyone? Back in my childhood I remember that Bangladesh’s summers me

Glaciers play a foundational role in sustaining ecosystems, regulating hydrological cycles and supporting livelihoods, particularly by supplying fresh water to downstream populations. Yet this natural system is now under severe threat. Climate change, largely driven by human activity, is accelerating glacier melt at an unprecedented pace. Over the past two decades, global glacier mass has declined sharply, with the most rapid losses recorded in five of the last six years. Sci

Weather is usually discussed through forecasts and figures, yet for millions of people it is something far more immediate. It determines whether work happens or stops, whether food reaches markets, and whether a family feels secure or vulnerable. For those who spend their lives outside climate-controlled spaces, weather is not background noise—it is a daily negotiation. Having lived and worked across different regions of India and Southern Africa for over thirty years, I have

Monsoon in the Pakistani Valley The ongoing floods send a clear warning that the South Asian monsoon, which has shaped life in this region for centuries, is undergoing fundamental changes. In Pakistan, monsoon rains no longer follow familiar calendars, locations or levels of intensity. What was once broadly predictable has become irregular and destructive. This shift is steadily reshaping the country’s flood landscape and placing severe strain on institutions, infrastructure,

Director: Fisher Stevens We (the science community) have not done the best job, frankly, of communicating this threat (climate change) to the public. Amidst hundreds of compelling words, I chose a quote from astronaut Dr. Piers Sellers in “Before the Flood” to start the review. Frankly speaking, these often-overlooked words reveal why, even today, people are not properly sensitized to the effects of climate change on Earth. Presented by Leonardo DiCaprio, the United Nat

The most disruptive forces of climate change are not always spectacular. They often emerge in silence, inscribed in the slow corrosion of metal, the crumbling of concrete, and the decay of once-stable infrastructure. Beneath the headlines of extreme weather events lies a subtler crisis: the accelerated weathering of the materials that sustain global industry and commerce. Across coastlines and cities, environmental shifts in temperature, humidity, and salinity are transformin

Photo by Adib Ashhab Ankon Bangladesh is one of the most climate-vulnerable countries in the world due to its geographic location, low-lying deltaic terrain, dense population, and dependence on climate-sensitive livelihoods. Home to nearly 180 million people, the country is regularly exposed to a wide range of weather-related hazards including severe thunderstorms, floods, heatwaves, cold waves, cyclones, storm surges, lightning, and sea-level rise. Approximately 19 out of 64