Innehållsförteckning för November 2023 från National Geographic Magazine

AS I WRITE, it’s a few weeks since both the United States and the European Union confirmed the hottest average global temperature ever recorded. Intense and unusual heat waves (86°F in Buenos Aires during Argentina’s winter), along with fires, storms, and other extreme weather events, seemed to make 2023 the year that climate change became more palpable for many people. Of course, climate change is more complicated than things simply getting hotter, but the overall warming of the Earth is perhaps the most direct consequence of the carbon dioxide we have released into the atmosphere since the 19th century. What to do about this problem is the subject of this month’s cover story, in which writer Sam Howe Verhovek and photographer Davide Monteleone take a closer look at carbon removal…

These herbivores look like leaves, twigs, and bark—giving new meaning to the phrase “You are what you eat.” Phasmids, commonly known as stick or leaf insects, often fade into the flora to become virtually invisible. It’s an effective survival strategy: Their predators want to snack on an insect, so they ignore what appears to be a plant. Like the vegetation they mimic, most phasmids don’t move much, says entomologist Thies Büscher. They find a niche without competition for resources, and over time they’ve evolved to suit their surroundings. Look to similar environments in different parts of the world and you may find species that have survived in the same way: leaf insects that became more brown in arid habitats or green in tropical rainforests. Camouflage can be part of every…

ON AN ICE-CRUSTED RIDGE 3,000 feet above the angry swell of the South Atlantic, Emma Nicholson takes a deep breath behind her respirator, checks her climbing harness, and steps inside the gaping mouth of an active volcano. It’s a little after 4 p.m. on the wind-whipped summit rim of Mount Michael, which looms over Saunders Island. Located in the uninhabited South Sandwich archipelago, the island is one of the most isolated places a person can travel to on Earth—roughly 500 miles from the closest permanent station on South Georgia and more than a thousand miles from the nearest shipping traffic. In fact, the closest people to Emma and her expedition mates are the seven astronauts and cosmonauts aboard the International Space Station, which passes roughly 250 miles above them every…

SOURCES: STEPHEN PACALA, PRINCETON UNIVERSITY; KATE LEBLING AND DANIELLE RIEDL, WORLD RESOURCES INSTITUTE; NATIONAL ACADEMIES OF SCIENCES, ENGINEERING, AND MEDICINE; INTERGOVERNMENTAL PANEL ON CLIMATE CHANGE; UN ENVIRONMENT PROGRAMME Dozens of new technologies and processes are urgently being developed in the quest to keep global warming below 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit), a threshold considered vital to avoid climate change’s worst consequences. According to the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, we’ll need to drastically reduce fossil fuel emissions while also removing up to 12 billion metric tons of carbon a year from the atmosphere by mid-century. Here are 12 of the most promising removal strategies to date. SOURCES: STEPHEN PACALA, PRINCETON UNIVERSITY; NATIONAL ACADEMIES OF SCIENCES, ENGINEERING, AND MEDICINE; INTERGOVERNMENTAL PANEL ON CLIMATE CHANGE; UN ENVIRONMENT PROGRAMME 12 CARBON-REMOVAL…

In March 2023, Doest was on assignment for National Geographic Expeditions in the frigid waters off Antarctica—and marveling at the wildlife on South Georgia island. After nearly two centuries as a hunting ground, the now protected area is known for its abundance of animals, including one of the world’s largest rookeries of king penguins. Doest photographed the busy birds’ frenetic motions as they waddled, swam, and somehow found their offspring in a sea of thousands. WHO A National Geographic Explorer who focuses on the relationship between humans and nature WHERE Salisbury Plain on South Georgia island WHAT Mirrorless camera with a telephoto lens National Geographic has more than 450 million Instagram followers. Join them here: @natgeo, @natgeotravel, @natgeointhefield, @natgeoadventure, @natgeoyourshot, @natgeotv, @natgeowild, @natgeodocs. Subscriptions For subscriptions or changes of address,…

IN 1860 CHARLES DARWIN wrote, “The sight of a feather in a peacock’s tail, whenever I gaze at it, makes me sick!” The plumes were so extravagant, he surmised, they could be a hindrance to survival. Darwin’s frustration with their seemingly inexplicable elegance eventually led him to the idea of sexual selection. Although this form of natural selection—driven by the preference of one sex for certain characteristics in individuals of the other sex—is well understood today, a peacock’s feather can still hold mystery for its viewers, says Heidi Koch. She and her husband, Hans-Jürgen, have spent the past few years photographing feathers in all their glorious detail. The German couple has trained their lenses on the natural world for more than three decades, but they don’t consider themselves nature photographers.…

Some monarchs fly thousands of miles each year from southern Canada all the way to the mountains outside of Mexico City. How do they do it? A new study says monarchs that make it to the Mexico wintering grounds have white wing spots 3 percent larger than those of monarchs sampled from other parts of the North American migration. This may mean that the black-and-white patterns on monarch wings create micro-vortices of warm and cool air that in turn reduce drag while the insects soar in the sun. Three percent may not seem like much—but for animals that weigh as little as a kernel of corn and have to fly across a continent, tiny changes could yield real benefits, the scientists say. Similar drag-reduction properties have been found in the…

REMOTE HOT SPOT The 11 islands of the 240-mile-long South Sandwich chain formed where the South American tectonic plate moves sideways and downward, or subducts, under the South Sandwich plate. Isolated, uninhabited, and largely ice covered, most of the islands have a documented history of volcanic activity. HOW THEY FORM A convective cycle brings magma up from an underground reservoir. Once at Earth’s surface, magma is called lava. Steady heat from below keeps the lava lake from cooling and solidifying. SOURCES: EMMA NICHOLSON, UCL; EINAT LEV, COLUMBIA U.; CLIVE OPPENHEIMER, U. OF CAMBRIDGE; PATRICK ALLARD, IPGP; JOHN SMELLIE, U. OF LEICESTER; VOLCANO HAZARDS PROGRAM, USGS; GLOBAL VOLCANISM PROGRAM, SMITHSONIAN’S NATIONAL MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY; BRITISH ANTARCTIC SURVEY; NASA; PGC; USGS *BASED ON SATELLITE AND DRONE OBSERVATIONS DATING FROM 1995. LAVA…

The first time the Weddell seal notices the orcas, it’s already surrounded. Until moments before, it had been resting on an ice floe deep in an Antarctic channel. Then three killer whales’ heads appear, bobbing up and down. The orcas are hunting. On this sheet of sea ice, the nearly thousand-pound seal would be unreachable for most marine predators. But these orcas—a matriarch with her daughter and granddaughter—are three of about a hundred known to have mastered a hunting technique called wave washing. The secret: working together to turn water into a weapon. The orcas, having identified their target, form a battle line and start charging toward the floe. Just before reaching it, they rotate to their sides in a single, synchronized motion and plunge underwater. The momentum creates a wave…

Bertie Gregory During his childhood in England, Gregory was teased for being “totally obsessed with the natural world,” he says. That enthusiasm, combined with his photography and filmmaking skills, has earned him a BAFTA for cinematography and the Best Presenter Award at the 2019 Jackson Wild film festival. His series Animals Up Close With Bertie Gregory, now streaming on Disney+ and Hulu, takes viewers in front of and behind the camera, as well as on land and underwater, for rarely seen wildlife behaviors. An Explorer since 2015, he has spent several years tracking pack ice killer whales in Antarctica, the subject of his feature story in this month’s issue. Page 100 Davide Monteleone Originally from Italy, Monteleone is a visual artist and researcher who focuses on themes of geopolitics, data,…

OVER THE PAST FEW CENTURIES, WE HAVE DUG, CHOPPED, BURNED, DRILLED, PUMPED, STRIPPED, FORGED, FLARED, LIT, LAUNCHED, DRIVEN, AND FLOWN OUR WAY TO ADDING 2.4 TRILLION METRIC TONS OF CARBON DIOXIDE TO EARTH’S ATMOSPHERE. That’s as much CO2 as would be emitted annually by 522 billion cars, or 65 cars per person living today. On a lonely, lunar-like valley 20 miles outside of Reykjavík, Iceland, Edda Aradóttir is on a mission to put it back where it came from. She’s returning a tiny bit of it today but much, much more of it in the years ahead. In sending CO2 deep beneath the surface of the planet, she’s aiming to reverse one of the most consequential acts of human history: the unearthing of massive amounts of subterranean carbon as fossil…

It’s an American dream: These immigrants traveled across the continent and settled on the prairies. They prospered from working hard seven days a week and came to live in this ranch house west of Chicago. TODAY’S THE BIRTHDAY PARTY for one of the moms. Two cakes, Mylar balloons, women in the kitchen, and the men still at work. Shiny cardboard letters spell out Happy Birthday on the living room wall. Children and grandchildren and nieces and nephews run the hallway and jump on the couches. The laughter spills outdoors. This home on the Illinois prairie sits on the communal land of several nations. Ojibwa, Potawatomi, and Odawa families have roots here. Long ago the county two-lane might have been a wagon path, a dirt trail that hosted pilgrims and vagabonds…