The Mediterranean nearly dried up. A cataclysmic flood revived it.

The serene turquoise waters of the Mediterranean Sea hide a sharp-tasting secret: a layer of salt up to two miles thick, lurking deep underneath the basin. Even after decades of study, the details surrounding the sea’s vanishing act and the torrents of water that refilled the basin remain an enduring mystery.

Europe Is Shrinking

Across Europe, the sea is encroaching on nearly a fifth of the coastline. While coastal erosion is a global phenomenon, Europe is especially exposed, with the highest ratio of shoreline to total land area of any continent.

Half of the world’s beaches could disappear by the end of the century, study finds

Climate change poses an existential threat to the world’s sandy beaches, and that as many as half of them could disappear by the end of the century, a new study has found. The study was published Monday in the scientific Journal Nature Climate Change and was conducted by scientists from the European Commission’s Joint Research Center, as well as universities in Spain, Portugal and the Netherlands.