Bathed in the blinding light of the sun on an archipelago above the Arctic Circle, you may be shocked by what remains of a glacier. Or at least that’s what happened to the photographer Christian Aslund, who had last visited that place in 2002. Now, the ice is almost completely melted.
Earlier this year, in fact, Christian boarded the Greenpeace ship, The Witness, to return to revisit some of the glaciers he first captured in photos in 2002. Already two decades ago, Greenpeace asked Åslund to use photographs taken in the early 20th century and photograph the same views to document how Svalbard’s glaciers were melting due to global warming.
The result is jaw-dropping: the difference in ice density in those images, taken almost a century apart, is enormous.
In 2002, climate change was not as well known as it is now – he says. Seeing all the glaciers, we really saw the difference compared to these last 22 years. There is a huge amount of glacial ice that has disappeared. It’s sad,” says Åslund, “especially when you hold the historical image in your hand and see that the whole fjord comes from the glaciers and where the glaciers meet, and you’re in the landscape when they were almost gone, in the same fjords.
This summer, Svalbard’s glaciers melted at the fastest rate since records began. In just one day, according to the work of the University of Liège, Svalbard shed approximately 55 mm of water equivalent, a rate 5 times higher than normal. If this particular chain of glaciers completely melted, sea levels would rise by 1.7 cm. But the worrying thing is that the temperature has skyrocketed compared to most of the rest of the world. According to recent estimates, it has warmed by 4°C in the last 30 years.
The comparison images are so shocking that when they were first published in 2002, people accused him of doctoring them. It is not difficult for us to believe this, given that the deniers are still there…
This has been going on since 2002 when it was first published. People don’t want to believe it, but the images have been criticized for being retouched or taken in the wrong season, but a glacier is not affected that much from a winter season to a summer season. It’s not like snow or ice where it melts and comes back.
So the point? We don’t understand why people don’t want to believe it’s true. Some persist in not accepting the science and would rather believe that it is all false. And Trump’s new mandate will not benefit any corner of the globe when it comes to the climate emergency.
HERE all the images.
