Time: 7:00-9:00 p.m., Wednesday, May 8th

Location: Pfizer Hall at Harvard University, 12 Oxford Street, Cambridge (link to directions)

Speakers: Jordan Wilkerson

Graphics: Nick Lue

The Arctic Circle has been getting slushier over the past century. The culprit is climate change. From Russia to Canada to Alaska, roads and buildings are beginning to collapse under the melting soil on which they rest. But humans aren’t the only ones affected. Acres of Arctic trees tilt, teeter, and often tumble because of the unstable, thawing ground beneath. When the soil thaws, the meltwater flows through the ground, transporting ancient nutrients to the burgeoning communities of microscopic life. They breathe out carbon dioxide and other potent greenhouse gases that may further bump up our planet’s temperatures. The frozen ground, where all of these changes are taking place, spans a quarter of the land in the Northern Hemisphere. In this lecture, we’ll discuss how the rapid changes to our climate have altered the landscape of Earth’s colder regions – and how the millions of people living there are affected.

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