Over the past decade, scientists and photographers keep returning to the world's glaciers, watching them shrink with each visit. Now they want others to see how a warming planet is melting masses of ice in a series of before-and-after photos. In the Geological Society of America's GSA Today journal, a group of ice researchers and a photographer-filmmaker published pictures showing how much five of the world's glaciers have thinned, the AP reports. "There is something fundamentally compelling about the approach they take. For all our emphasis on models and math, seeing is still believing," said University of Colorado ice scientist Ted Scambos, who wasn't part of the team.
Under natural conditions, glaciers at times melt and retreat while others grow and advance. But measurements from Earth's 5,200 glaciers show warming temperatures have increased the number of melting glaciers and the speed of glacial retreat, according to the study. Scientists primarily blame man-made global warming from the burning of coal, oil, and natural gas. "There is something that touches the heart more profoundly when you see it in pictures than when you see it in maps or reports or graphs," said photographer James Balog, who founded the nonprofit Earth Vision Institute. "It certainly brings it alive." Check out the photo comparisons and see how much each glacier shrank in the gallery. (More glacier stories.)
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