As a grants reviewer for a national mountaineering association, I see multiple proposals dealing with climate change in polar and alpine regions. Over the past decade a large percentage of the research projects we’ve reviewed and awarded have dealt with glacial ice status of one sort or another. From the Himalayas, to the Rocky Mountains, across the islands of the Arctic and Greenland, the rapid thawing of glaciers is being recorded and is of particular concern in reference to global warming and its mechanisms. One serious issue could become the depletion of water supplies for agricultural and human uses in developing countries where glacial run-off is a primary source for drinking and irrigation water.

Photography and video can play a central role in capturing the status of glaciers and their movement or decline. “re-photography”, which compares a past or historical image with one taken more recently at the exact mountain location, has proved of particular value in detailing vegetation and glacial ice changes. If a photo had been captured only five years earlier of this Montana mountain range, this image of wholesale forest die-off shot in June would have clearly shown how fast landscape changes can happen under conditions of environmental stress.

Re-captured images of mountain glaciers like those shown by a recent wall poster clearly illustrate the retreat of glaciers. Such mountain re-photography will be presented in more detail by the in a forthcoming book, “Earth Under Fire: How Global Warming is Changing the World” to be published by University of California Press. Likewise, stationery time lapse video of glaciers can show the process of retreat in virtually “real time”. The Extreme Ice Survey now underway in eastern Greenland, Rocky Mountain National Park, Alaska, Bolivia, and elsewhere will release documentary footage in the coming years from 18 locations where video cameras have been mounted to observe glaciers. The first images from this pioneering research effort appeared in the June 2007 issue of National Geographic Magazine.

Besides remote mountain and polar landscapes, the impacts of snow and ice decline are even touching tourist towns where one town in France is living out the nightmare of many a ski resort as climates continue to warm. The city council of Abondance, France voted in June to shut down their ski slopes (and economic base) because of lack of snow for skiing. For the people of Abondance, the impacts climate change are not in their future but are their present day experience.