Sometimes, the best way to understand what’s happening on the other side of the world is to see it for yourself. Here are some of our favorite Instagrammers who focus on capturing our changing planet

Weather



A storm chaser from Slovenia, Marko Korosec (@markokorosecnet) has been researching severe weather events through forecasting, chasing and analysis since 2000. He counts the above capture of a “spaceship” supercell storm in Colorado among his most memorable chases. It was like “an UFO landing on Earth”, he writes.

Best known for his face-meltingly beautiful storm photos, Kelly DeLay (@kellydelay) can often be found chasing major weather events across the US. His project to capture 1,825 days of cloud photos, Clouds 365, earned him a Webby award. Of this particular image, he says: “A wrapped up supercell moving slowly across the plains of central Texas, went on to produce several tornados and baseball-sized hail.”

Mike Mezeul (@mikemezphoto) lives in North Texas and documents extreme weather events. Pictured here are mammatus clouds stretching across the Texas sky: “It looks like the sky is falling!”



Johannesburg-based Mark Dumbleton (@markdumbletonphoto) specializes in landscape photography in Africa’s wild places. Here, he captured a rainbow in the wake of a storm in the Namibian desert.

Climate change

Matilde Gattoni (@matildegattoni) a Milan based photographer, recently covered the effects of climate change in West Africa. Here, she captured the Ghanaian village of Fuveme flooded due to rising sea levels. “While local governments scramble to salvage big cities and industrial complexes,” says Gattoni, “thousands of villages are being left out in the cold, pushing a thousands-year-old way of life on the brink of extinction.”

On the gradually disappearing island village of Kpogbor, Ghana, Gattoni photographed the last remaining resident. He is shown standing in front of a makeshift sea defense wall he has built in an attempt to protect what is left of his house.

Specializing in post-conflict and natural disaster zones, Vlad Sokhin (@lens_pacific) focuses on the impact of climate change on islands in Oceania. In this image, taken earlier this year, a man carries his four-year-old son to shore in heavy rain on the island of Tarawa in Kiribati. “Weather patterns have changed, and the sea was rougher then usual,” says Sokhin. “Most of the local fishermen didn’t go fishing in their canoes because it was not safe.”

Sean Gallagher (@sean_gallagher_photo) covers environmental issues in Asia. Here, a man walks past a river covered with litter in a Jakarta slum. “The city has increasingly suffered from floods caused by extreme weather each year,” he says. “When the floods come, they often wash large amounts of refuse into communities, completely blocking the flow of water.”

JB Russell (@jbrussell) is a photographer based in Paris focusing on issues threatening human security, including climate change. This man in Guinea-Bissau, West Africa, uses a rope to scare birds off his rice paddies. “Unusually strong storms and exceptionally high tides breached the levies that protect his rice paddies, destroying a large portion of his harvest,” says Russell. “These climate change phenomena have drastically reduced the rice production capacity of farmers, jeopardizing the food security and livelihoods of their families and communities.”

Wildlife

Jasper Doest (@jasperdoest) is a Dutch photographer focusing on wildlife and conservation. This image shows a Svalbard reindeer crossing the tundra while his moulting fur flies around in the strong Arctic wind. Doest writes that, while the reindeer have no natural enemies, the changing climate has put them under threat. Rain would cause greater insulation loss than increasing wind velocity in Svalbard reindeer of all ages, with the exception of calves under one month old, which could experience dramatic insulation loss from a combination of heavy rain and windchill.

Award-winning Norwegian photographer Ole Jorgen Liodden (@ojlwildphoto) gets up close to a female polar bear and her two cubs in Svalbard, Norway, on one of his many wildlife expeditions. “The sea ice in the Arctic is getting thinner and retreating earlier in the summer,” says Liodden. “With less ice, polar bears are facing a challenge in finding enough food to raise their cubs.”

Based in Cape Town, South Africa, James Suter (@jamessuter) uses photography to raise awareness about species in Africa under threat like the rhino, elephant, gorilla and lion. Here, he captures a lighthearted moment between a lion and her cubs. “Play is such an important part of a lion cub’s development and something rare to observe,” he says.



Environmental justice

Arati Kumar-Rao (@aratikumarrao) travels the Indian subcontinent to document the environmental and social effects of water and land overuse in the region. A recent black-and-white series showcases the biodiversity of the Sundarbans, a mangrove forest in Bangladesh, protesting the construction of a nearby coal-fired power plant in Rampal. Here, she captures an oil spill in the Sundarbans. She writes: “Imagine the wastes a thermal plant at the head of the Sundarbans will generate: fly ash and bottom ash, hazardous wastes that contain arsenic, lead, mercury, and radioactive elements which will be buried or transported off site.”

Aaron Vincent Elkaim (@avelkaim) is a documentary photographer based in Toronto. Here, he photographed the smog caused by the Syncrude Oil Sands project in Northern Alberta, Canada. “The smog often fills the road and the steam has been known to create its own weather,” he writes. “They call it ‘Syncrude snow’.”



