Share a Photo to Help Connect the Dots on Climate

Photo courtesy of Bob McMillan/FEMA
On May 5th, join the NWF, 350.org and partners across the globe in connecting the dots between climate change, changes in extreme weather, and the impacts to local habitats and wildlife. With your help, we will begin collecting images that show the impacts of global warming and motivate people to take political action in the fight for the future of wildlife.

This intensification of weather is one of the most visible impacts of global warming in our everyday lives.

For example:

  • Climate change is bringing more heavy rainfall events, and more extreme flooding events.
  • Record hot days and heat waves are becoming more likely now that the U.S. surface temperature has increased about 2°F over the last 50 years, even more than the warming averaged for the whole planet.
  • Night-time temperatures have shown a particularly striking upward trend, worsening heat stress in plants and wildlife that don’t have a chance to cool down.
  • Sea-surface temperatures are increasing in the main development area for tropical storms in the North Atlantic, leading to more intense hurricanes.
  • Winter weather from year to year is yo-yoing between record snowfalls and unusually mild conditions.

You can help connect the dots between weather extremes that are part of the pattern of intensifying weather caused by climate change.  Just create a “dot” make out of cardboard, or people, a bike wheel or anything else in a place that is impacted by weather extremes, or that shows a solution to global warming.

Take photos with a dot at:

  • River or stream habitats that have been impacted by extreme flooding.
  • Lakes that experienced lessened ice cover during the unusually warm winter.
  • Favorite outdoor areas that did not experience the usual snowfall.
  • Gardens that have begun growing weeks earlier than usual.
  • Habitats that have suffered from worsened drought.
  • Areas torn apart by tropical storms.
  • Coal-fired power plants that are dumping global warming pollution into the air.
  • Your rain barrel for coping with droughts; solar panels for generating clean energy; native flower gardens that can survive worsened weather; rain gardens that help during floods; or other solutions.

Send in your photo connecting the dots:

  • Use our examples or your own creative ideas to decide where to take your photo — either of something impacted by extreme weather or a solution.
  • Form a dot — out of plants, cardboard, people — anything!
  • Take a handful of photos!
  • Email each photo one at a time to alerts@nwf.org with the name of the photographer, location and description of what is in the photo!

By emailing the photo to alerts@nwf.org, you are donating the image to the National Wildlife Federation for use in furthering its mission. Donors retain ownership of their photos to use them as they wish, and grant NWF, its subsidiaries, affiliates and partners an irrevocable non-exclusive license to reproduce, publish, circulate or otherwise use the photographs howsoever in any medium now in existence or to be established, throughout the world in perpetuity.  NWF greatly appreciates all image donations.

We look forward to seeing your photos that help “Connect the Dots” between extreme weather and climate change.