In September, Jason Box, a glaciology and climate professor, was camping on top of the Greenland ice sheet when he noticed something startling. “We could see it in the sky, these wavy dark clouds,” Box said. Those clouds are called asperitas, and they were an early indication that a storm was coming. Jason and his crew needed to get off the glacier immediately. That same day, 12 billion tons of ice melted into the ocean.

It turned out that Greenland was experiencing an unusual late-season heat wave, ”a clear indicator of a warming climate,” according to Box. The ice sheet is one of the top contributors to rising sea levels in the world, and that melting ice is coming for Miami.

South Florida could see five feet of sea-level rise – or more – by the end of this century. This episode, we’re breaking down the science, and explaining why Miami in particular is so vulnerable. Plus, what will all that water mean for the people living there? For starters, sunny day flooding and storm surge are going to get way more intense.

But science can only tell us so much. Later in the episode, we explore how society fares in the aftermath of disaster with novelist Bruce Holsinger. Holsinger’s new novel The Displacements is an eerily realistic depiction of what happens to Miami when a hurricane called Luna, unlike anything the world has ever seen, directly hits the metro area. Holsinger did a lot of research on hurricanes before writing the novel. When he interviewed experts about what a direct hit on Miami might look like, he was shocked by how scary their predictions were. Holsinger says, “even my novelist’s imagination, it couldn’t stretch to that extent of disaster.”