The mission of the Initiative is to photograph as many non-polar glaciers as possible “before they are gone” using small aircraft. The purpose of the aerial perspective is to convey an artistically engaging human interest element to these shared and disappearing treasures.
Starting with the glaciers of the American Rockies and later spreading to the recently melted cirques of the Pyrenees and then onto the stirring glaciers of the Swiss and French Alps, a Piper PA-11 Cub Special, built in 1949, was flown to these locales to collect photographs before glaciers disappear.
In 2021, a more capable Piper PA-18 Super Cub was added to the fleet, where it was used to photograph the glaciers of mainland Norway and Sweden.
From a personal mission, that grew into the founding creed of the Initiative, to “get them before they are gone."
The year that ETH Zurich predicts only 2 glaciers left in Switzerland.
Percentage of built in additional glacier loss if we go to Carbon zero now.
The year science initially predicted that glaciers world melt in Glacier National Park USA.
Percentage glacial loss in the Swiss Alps since 1850.
Scientific studies predict the extinction of the majority of non-polar glacier mass by the end of the current century. Should carbon zero be achieved today, as much as 40% of glacial mass could still disappear, as there is a lag in the climate system which will result in additional loss. The sad fact is that our glaciers are likely doomed; therefore, the primary mission of the Global Glacier Initiative is to document as many of them as possible before they disappear. While it may be pessimistic, it is erring on the side of caution as trends are not on our side.
When the GGI was founded only a few years ago, it did not seem reasonable to visit the same glaciers again unless at least a decade went by. The summers of 2022, 2023, and 2024 took the world by surprise, with more melting than the previous 30 years combined. The mission is revised to sometimes revisit glaciers more frequently.
There will come a time, in a century or less, where the people alive then will not know what it is like to experience temperate-region glaciers. These images will be one of the few windows left into our current world.
Where the glacier meets the sky, the land ceases to be earthly, and the earth becomes one with the heavens; no sorrows live there anymore, and therefore joy is not necessary; beauty alone reigns there, beyond all demands.
HALLDÓR LAXNESS
Just to lie here in the sun with great white peaks all around me and the biggest glacier in Europe at my feet, to eat from time to time, to sleep a little and dream a great deal- it is a heavenly existence.
GEORGE LEIGH MALLORY