Greta Stacy is a high school science teacher in Doha, Qatar. She has previously taught in Ecuador and the United States.
Students may already be familiar with the warming of the arctic, but there are other regions of Earth that are more densely populated and also feeling outsized effects of the climate crisis. The populations in these areas tend to be vulnerable to these effects; you can use this lesson with your class to help them understand How Climate Change Affects People Differently. This topic is important to teach because it allows for conversations about climate justice. You can use the Climate Justice and Equity Student Lab to start these discussions with your students.
Written By: MIT Environmental Solutions Initiative
The MIT Climate Change Engagement Program, a part of MIT Climate HQ, provides the public with nonpartisan, easy-to-understand, and scientifically-grounded information on climate change and its solutions.
As the planet grows warmer because of climate change, it will not happen evenly. So far, as the physics of Earth’s climate systems would predict, we’re seeing the most warming near the poles. But as MIT professor of environmental engineering Elfatih Eltahir explains, some of the most worrying regions for future warming are also among the most populated on our planet.
As Eltahir points out, climate records have already shown some countries heating up faster than others, including the polar regions of Russia and Canada. Warming in these Arctic regions leads to the loss of ice and snow, which are highly reflective and bounce a lot of sunlight back into space. Once they are gone, there is more exposed land to absorb the sun’s energy.
Current data also shows temperatures rising faster in the Sahara Desert, as well as in a large piece of South America that falls mostly within Brazil.2 The causes are not entirely clear, but Eltahir says land use changes, especially deforestation, may play an outsized role in the region’s warming trend. (There is also a persistent spot in the North Atlantic Ocean that is cooling while the rest of the globe warms, driven by atmospheric changes.)
