Using both time-lapse and conventional photography as well as digital video, the Extreme Ice Survey is the most extensive visual study ever conducted to illustrate the catastrophic melting of glacial ice. The result is a dramatic and timely demonstration of global warming’s dangerous consequences from Alaska to Iceland to the Alps. Serviced via foot, horseback, dogsled, skis, fishing boats, and helicopters at 15 sites in the Northern Hemisphere and programmed to shoot once an hour, every hour of daylight, each of the 26 cameras captures approximately 4,000 images per year. This stunning collection of photographs will form a companion exhibition traveling to museums all over the world as part of an urgent outreach campaign aimed at educating the public about global warming and providing irrefutable scientific evidence of how rapidly our planet’s climate is changing.

Launched in the fall of 2006 and scheduled to continue until late summer of 2009, the remarkable Extreme Ice Survey archive will ultimately total more than 300,000 photographs—a treasure trove of data for researchers and a portrait of nature as arresting and unforgettable as it is ominous.