These days the climate change conversation rarely strays from dry political soundbites about emission target percentages and ETS frameworks. But logging on to the Extreme Ice Survey website brings the reality of global warming sharply back into focus.
EIS uses video, conventional photography and time-lapse photography to document changes on the Earth’s glacial ice. The team have installed 27 time-lapse cameras at 15 sites around the world — including Greenland, Iceland, Alaska, and the Rocky Mountains. The EIS website explains:
EIS cameras are programmed to shoot once an hour, every hour of daylight, indefinitely. Each camera captures approximately 4,000 images per year for a total projected archive of nearly 500,000 photographs by completion of the survey. The time-lapse images will be edited into video that reveals how fast climate change is transforming large regions of our planet.
The project began in 05, and the team started downloading footage in 07.
Carbon emissions are invisible, but very large chunks of ice sliding into the sea are a real and vivid visual clue that the effects of global warming are unfolding much faster than first thought.
You can also view the ETS footage on Google Earth.
Watch this (quickly expanding) space.
