When the Global Glacier Initiative was founded, the idea was to spend each season at a different mountain range, photographing as many glaciers as possible in each season. The thesis was that, by doing as much as possible per year, the highest chance of “photographing them before they are gone” would happen, and the goal might be met.
In the coming years, two things changed. First, when a glacier season ends in one mountain range, say in the Arctic, it is often not yet over in the Alps. That means that the season can be more productive by grabbing some additional glacier photos before the snows come. On this theme, sometimes the snows only hit higher elevations, and the larger glaciers can be photographed at lower altitudes down into October.
The second change is the melt rate. The Alps were completed in 2021. It was presumed, based on the melt rate of the previous 30 years, that we might photograph them again in 10 years. Well, nature had other plans. In the 2022 and 2023 summers, an astonishing 10% of existing ice melted in the Alps. In 2024, another 2.5% disappeared, totaling 1/8. 1/8th of everything that was photographed in 2021 is already gone! The melt rate of those three years exceeds the previous 30 years combined.
With those two realities in play, then it was obvious that the season wasn’t over in August 2024 after leaving Bodø, and much work awaited in the Alps. Most of Switzerland was photographed again, with some additional work in the rest of the Alps. While it wasn’t the entire mountain range, it was certainly an incredible amount of effort, with more hours flown in August 2024 than any other month on record.
It is expected that future years will include shoulder season photography as a matter of plan, and that we will be monitoring the Alps much more closely as the glaciers disappear faster than we expected.