The Earth’s coldest places are a hot mess.

As a result of climate change, studies suggest that most ski areas in southern New England will be out of business by 2040. A recent climate assessment in Vermont says that the Vermont ski season will be shortened by up to a month. In the western United States, high elevation snowpacks have decreased by nearly 50 percent in the last four decades. In the Alps, half of the glacial ice has disappeared.

This matters because when snow and ice vanish, sea levels rise, ocean currents change, wildfires become more intense, and fresh water becomes scarce — to name just a few impacts. Journalist Porter Fox has gone from traveling and skiing the world as a former editor of Powder Magazine to journeying through frozen lands to chronicle the alarming impacts of climate change. His new book is The Last Winter: The Scientists, Adventurers, Journeymen, and Mavericks Trying to Save the World.

"The cool, reflective crust of ice and snow now draped around the poles is the final buffer between us and radical climate change," Fox wrote recently in Time. If we lose the world's cold places, he warns, "we lose the world we know."