‘Slipping through our fingers’: New Zealand scientists distraught at scale of glacier loss

Franz Josef glacier, New Zealand. The pace at which the country’s glaciers are disappearing is accelerating. Photograph: NIWA / Rebekah Parsons-King

The plane’s engine groans, and its small frame rises. Through a thin membrane of cloud, the spine of the southern alps rises like a dark sawblade.

“I’m wondering if my favourite glacier is going to be there,” says principal climate scientist Dr Andrew Lorrey. “We’ve had a really, really hot one this summer. It’s hard to say. We’ll just have to see how they’ve gone.”