Sample text from the month of March
In 2006, rising seas finally obliterated the remote Sundarbans island of Lohachara, once inhabited by 10,000 people: in all, a dozen islands in the Ganges delta are in danger of being submerged. 634 million people (one tenth of the global population) live in coastal areas at less than 10 metres above sea level. Low-lying island states such as Tuvalu (shown here) are especially vulnerable to climate change because major coastal settlements are located at or near present sea level.
Sea-level rise is caused by warming seas combined with the loss of land-based ice. Increasing amounts of ice mass are being lost from West Antarctica and the Antarctic peninsula. Researchers at Bristol University have estimated a loss of 132 billion tonnes of ice in 2006 from West Antarctica – up from about 83 billion tonnes in 1996. Over this 10-year period, the ice sheet’s mass loss increased by 75%, mainly driven by glacier acceleration.