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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
Environment
Helena Horton

‘People do not want to believe it is true’: the photographer capturing the vanishing of glaciers

The view from Kongsfjorden with the glaciers Kronebreen, Kongsbreen and Kongsvegen spreading out around the mountain Collethøgda.
The view from Kongsfjorden with the glaciers Kronebreen, Kongsbreen and Kongsvegen spreading out around the mountain Collethøgda. Photograph: Christian Åslund/Greenpeace

Standing in blinding sunlight on an archipelago above the Arctic Circle, the photographer Christian Åslund looked in shock at a glacier he had last visited in 2002. It had almost completely disappeared.

Two decades ago Greenpeace asked Åslund to use photographs taken in the early 20th century, and photograph the same views in order to document how glaciers in Svalbard were melting due to global heating. The difference in ice density in those pictures, taken almost a century apart, was staggering.

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