Shrinking glaciers: Mont Blanc from the air, 100 years on

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/oct/10/shrinking-glaciers-mont-blanc-from-the-air-100-years-on

Shrinking glaciers: Mont Blanc from the air, 100 years on

Guardian staff

Thu 10 Oct 2019 11.22 BST Last modified on Thu 10 Oct 2019 11.24 BST

In 1919, the Swiss pilot and photographer Walter Mittelholzer flew over Mont Blanc in a biplane photographing the alpine landscape. A century on, scientists have recreated his images to show the impact of global heating on the mountain’s glaciers.

Dr Kieran Baxter and Dr Alice Watterson from the University of Dundee used a process called monoplotting to work out the precise locations from which Mittelholzer had taken his photographs. They returned to the spot in a helicopter and lined up their cameras using the alpine peaks as their guide.

The scientists captured images of three glaciers that Mittelholzer had also photographed: the Bossons glacier, the Argentinière glacier and the Mer de Glace, all on the northern side of the Mont Blanc massif.

The resulting photographs show just how much ice has been lost from the region over the past century.

Baxter said: “The scale of the ice loss was immediately evident as we reached altitude but it was only by comparing the images side-by-side that the last 100 years of change were made visible.

“It was both a breathtaking and heartbreaking experience, particularly knowing that the melt has accelerated massively in the last few decades.”

The Mer de Glace, the longest glacier in France, is the site of the biggeste changes over past decades. In the 1800s, travel writers described how it could be seen from the resort town of Chamonix, but it has since receded more than 2km up the mountain’s slopes.

The Mer de Glace “is now melting at the rate of around 40 metres a year and has lost 80 metres in depth over the last 20 years alone,” the glaciologist Luc Moreau told the Guardian last year.
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