Climate Change Is Destabilizing the Ground Beneath Our Feet
Climate change is causing significant geological instability, leading to melting permafrost and retreating glaciers that trigger massive landslides. These events are becoming more frequent and dangerous, threatening communities and infrastructure globally.
Why it matters
This shift indicates that climate change is moving beyond atmospheric impacts to fundamentally alter the stability of the Earth's physical surface.
Mountains are shifting, permafrost is melting, and the risk of landslides is rising.
Illustration by Alisa Gao / The Atlantic. July 31, 2026, 10:20 AM ET Share Save On geologic timescales, the Earth is a dynamic place. Tectonic plates shift. Continents move. Mountains rise and fall. But during humanity’s tenure on Earth, the ground beneath our feet has largely stayed put.
That stable period may now be at an end. Climate change began in the atmosphere, where greenhouse gases accumulate, trapping heat from the sun. The planet’s waters reacted—precipitation patterns shifted, glaciers and ice caps began melting, the ocean generously sponged up heat and carbon dioxide.
When the Earth’s waters shift, so does solid ground. Now warming is destabilizing land across the planet, and geology is becoming a real-time science. In more and more places, the floor is giving way.
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