Google Apocalypse

Warnings about global warming and rising temperatures seem a little abstract. With the most recent version of Google Earth, you can now watch the next hundred years of climate change unfold before your eyes.

The U.K. government's Met Office has created a downloadable KMZ file that will show you what climate scientists see, using medium projections of greenhouse gas emissions. The most startling changes occur around the North Pole, where areas of the Arctic Ocean will increase by as much as 18 degrees Celsius.

You can also learn about expected regional impacts, including water shortages throughout the United States and an ice-free Arctic by 2050, and read stories of how people in the U.K. and in some of the world's poorest countries are already being affected by changing weather patterns.