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Maryland, with 3,100 miles of tidal shoreline from the Chesapeake Bay and its tributaries to the Atlantic Ocean and coastal bays, is highly vulnerable to sea-level rise. The effects of accelerated sea-level rise are already apparent, including shoreline erosion, deterioration of tidal wetlands, and saline contamination of low-lying farm fields. Later this century, rates of sea-level rise increasingly depend on the future pathway of global emissions of greenhouse gases during the next sixty years.

As the summer sea ice in the Arctic waters off the coast of Alaska shrinks with each passing year, scientists are trying to predict changes in microscopic marine algae called phytoplankton in the ocean water.