This Is Climate Change, an educational project of the Del Mar Global Trust, put up the first of a series of large backlighted photographs on August 30, featuring my time series view of the shrinking Mendenhall Glacier in Alaska. As part of my long-term climate documentation project World View of Global Warming, I rephotographed a 1894 image in 2008 to show the visible effect of global warming on the glacier near Juneau.
This pair of photographs shows how the famous Mendenhall Glacier has retreated since around the turn of the 20th C. The ice has thinned and melted back more than 2800 meters (more than 9000 feet) since it was measured in 1911. The archival photo from the National Snow and Ice Data Center/ NOAA archives was made in 1894 by William Ogilvie during a geologic survey.
Over the past decade I have climbed and explored near glaciers in North America, The Alps and Andes to find the spots where old photographs were taken and carefully rephotograph the scene. The images together illustrate the data from current scientific observations of more than 100,000 glaciers around the world, measuring an ongoing trend of “global and rapid, if not accelerating, glacier shrinkage" which may lead to the deglaciation of large parts of many mountain ranges in the coming decades. Loss of mountain glaciers, which threatens summer water supplies to communities and ecosystems worldwide, is a major effect of the atmospheric warming from man-made greenhouse gas emissions.
This is Climate Change was developed by the Del Mar Global Trust, a private charitable foundation with a focus on the environment, to publicize the real effects of climate change which have impacts on the environment and human lives around the world. The intent is to educate and increase awareness of climate change among the general public. In collaborating with the Trust, World View of Global Warming extends its work to inform Americans and people worldwide of the ongoing science of climate change and the effects of greenhouse gases which are being spewed into the air at record rates. Read the full report here.
Source: by Gary Braasch, National Geographic New Watch.
