Glaciers across the world are vanishing in the heat of climate change. Nature photographer James Balog captures these icy sentinels in the midst of their retreat, bringing the stark reality of global warming into focus.
A meltwater lake forms on top of a patch of ice in Greenland. Such lakes may actually accelerate warming, since the dark water absorbs more heat than the reflective ice.
(Image Credit: James Balog/Earth Vision Trust/Yale Environment 360)
Meltwater crevasses on Greenland’s ice sheet, seen from above. 40% of Greenland’s ice sheet showed signs of melting this past June, according to the National Snow and Ice Data Center.
(Image Credit: James Balog/Earth Vision Trust/Yale Environment 360)
Icebergs calving off of the Ilulissat glacier in Greenland, also known as Jakobshavn glacier (which is thought to have spawned the iceberg that sunk the Titanic). In February, scientists said Ilulissat’s speed in 2012 and 2013 was three times that of the 1990s.
(Image Credit: James Balog/Earth Vision Trust/Yale Environment 360)
A chunk of Ilulissat Glacier floats out into the north Atlantic. The massive glacier was moving about 150 feet per day across Greenland in summer 2012.
(Image Credit: James Balog/Earth Vision Trust/Yale Environment 360)
Bubbles of air float up from the dark, cryconite-coated depths of the melting Greenland ice sheet. Human activities have increased the amount of soot in cryconite since the Industrial Revolution, making the depths even darker.
(Image Credit: James Balog/Earth Vision Trust/Yale Environment 360)
Icebergs that have calved off from the Ilulissat glacier. Every year, 8 cubic miles of ice break away from this glacier.
(Image Credit: James Balog/Earth Vision Trust/Yale Environment 360)
You can see just how far the Columbia Glacier in Alaska has retreated in the landscape pictured here. Back in the 1980s, the glacier filled up the valley, all the way up to the dark vegetation on the peaks of the mountains. Now, after two decades and 10 miles of retreat, rocks once sealed off by ice are exposed once more.
(Image Credit: James Balog/Earth Vision Trust/Yale Environment 360)
A meltwater lake on Columbia Glacier in Alaska.
(Image Credit: James Balog/Earth Vision Trust/Yale Environment 360)
Waterfalls form from the melting runoff of the Tahumming Glacier in British Columbia.
(Image Credit: James Balog/Earth Vision Trust/Yale Environment 360)
The disappearance of the Trift Glacier in the Swiss Alps is captured in these photos, the top taken in September 2006 and the bottom in September 2011.
(Image Credit: James Balog/Earth Vision Trust/Yale Environment 360)
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