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Of the challenges surrounding global climate change, communicating its potential impact and increasing public awareness of the scientific research undertaken to monitor and model its effect on society are quite pressing. Today we are pleased that the British Government is launching with Google Earth Outreach, and in collaboration with the Met Office Hadley Centre and the British Antarctic Survey, new layers in Google Earth that utilize geographical information to show how climate change will affect our planet and its people.

From Colorado to Washington state, an unprecedented, years-long epidemic of mountain pine beetle has killed 2.6 million hectares (6.5 million acres) of forest. The insect has struck even more devastatingly to the north, in British Columbia, where clouds of beetles have laid waste to 14 million hectares (35 million acres) - twice the area of Ireland. It is expected to kill 80 percent of the Canadian province's lodgepole pines before it's finished. Farther north, in the Yukon, the pine beetle isn't endemic - yet. Here it's the spruce bark beetle that has eaten its way through 400,000 hectares (1 million acres) of woodland, and even more in neighboring Alaska, in a 15-year-old epidemic unmatched in its longevity and extent.