The Meteorology Center on the University of Miami’s main campus is the latest in a new line of ESD (Environmental Shield Designs) sprouting up along the eastern seaboard of the United States. The building has a second exterior consisting of a domed outer shell, composed of reinforced concrete and steel, designed to withstand hurricane winds up to 220 miles an hour. Inside this barrier is the mainframe, each door and window housing retractable steel shutters that seal automatically at the touch of a switch. Backup generators situated on the first floor can power the entire thousand-room building for two weeks, while satellite relays, wired directly into the curved roof, provide ample reception for the Center’s lines of communication.

Besides its role as a teaching facility, the Meteorology Center also serves as the United States southeast regional headquarters for the Earth Systems Management Agency, an organization that assesses, predicts, and monitors all environmental catastrophes across the globe.

Bruce Doyle rubs his sleep-deprived eyes, then drains the remains of his now-cold coffee. Although the effects of global warming had become increasingly apparent as early as the late 1980s, the U.S. government’s response to the problem was too little, coming too late. Doyle, the regional director of the ESMA, often equates the public’s delay with sticking one’s hand in a pot of cold water on a simmering stove. Because the changes in temperature happen so gradually, the victim never realizes the danger until flesh starts peeling away from the bone.

Doyle shakes his head in disbelief as he glances at the Winter 2033 ESMA QUARTERLY REPORT. Colder winters and hotter summers—that has been the pattern over the last thirty years, and the effects around the globe seem to be magnifying. More than 100 billion tons of water are being released from the Greenland Ice Sheet each year, doubling the melting rate from only two decades earlier, while raising sea levels another four inches. Millions of people living in low-lying lands have been displaced, from Bangladesh to Egypt. Outbreaks of malaria, dengue, and yellow fever continue moving farther north with each passing season. Storms and floods have washed away crops. Droughts and fires destroy more than 10 million hectares of forests a year. Summer heat waves have led to the deaths of thousands, while vanquishing countless plant and animal species into extinction.

And according to the QUARTERLY REPORT, things are getting worse.

The Western Antarctic Ice Sheet is continuing to melt at an alarming rate. The ice sheet, which rests on a bed far below sea level, contains nearly 2 million cubic miles of ice. Scientists now know that all marine-based ice sheets have melted within the last twenty thousand years. If the Western Antarctic Ice Sheet were to go, world ocean levels would rise, and not just by inches, but by more than twenty feet.