As the planet warms and the world is gripped by an urgent sense of impending environmental collapse, the public turns its attention to the North. The Arctic is warming twice as fast as the rest of the planet, and the future that scientists predict for the rest of us is already happening there. The images in this book - including many photographs of never before seen wildlife and human adaptations - reveal truths, dispel myths, and satisfy while intensifying the public's interest in the dramatic warming that is reshaping life at the top of the world.
Last Days of the Great Ice targets a broad general audience, with numerous points of entry for a diverse readership. As I am a writer and a photographer, I engage the audience through storytelling with both images and words. This is a book for people who are passionate about photography, writing, stories, biology, indigenous cultures, adventurous travel, and conservation.
The audience for a new book on the North is vast and growing as reporting about climate change and the Arctic have become top news stories everywhere. Indeed, people in temperate latitudes are now experiencing alarming climate changes right where they live. The Washington Post calls 2016 "the year without a winter" and NOAA reports that temperatures were an astonishing 5 degrees above average nationwide. But the record breaking heat wasn’t uniformly distributed - it was particularly pronounced in the Arctic, where temperatures were a stunning 7.2 degrees higher than average. Alaska was a whopping 11 degrees above average. In December 2015 the temperature at the North Pole reached 50 degrees above average. In March 2016 Arctic sea ice was at a record low maximum extent for the second straight year, according to scientists at the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) and NASA.
“I’ve never seen such a warm, crazy winter in the Arctic,” said NSIDC director Mark Serreze. “The heat was relentless.”
As winter turned to spring, the warming continued. March 2016 marked the 11th consecutive month a monthly global temperature record was broken, the longest such streak in NOAA’s 137-year climate record. In May 2016 a 600 square-mile forest fire raged out of control in subarctic Alberta, Canada, forcing the evacuation of a city of 90,000 people.
In Greenland, The Great Ice itself has lost 9,103 gigatons (a gigaton is a billion metric tons) of ice since 1900. That’s over 9 trillion tons in total. Moreover, the rate of loss has been increasing, with a doubling of annual loss since 2003 compared with what it was throughout the 20th century. Greenland is now losing 287 billion metric tons of ice per year. New research by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory shows that the combined Greenland and Antarctic melt isn’t just raising seas - it’s changing the Earth’s rotation. The public is understandably concerned and anxious for more information.
Unlike other recent photo books about the Arctic, Last Days of the Great Ice includes the people of the far north, providing compelling evidence of how climate change is affecting modern Inuit culture and how they are adapting to it. According to the United Nations Environment Programme, we cannot understand and conserve the natural environment unless we understand the human cultures that shape it. There is growing recognition that traditional ecological knowledge and customary sustainable use underpin indigenous peoples’ resilience to climate change. Traditional knowledge can also enhance global action on climate change and contribute to the conservation and sustainable use of natural resources. This will be the first Arctic photo book to include these important concepts and address the large and growing audience interested in the human dimensions of climate change in the North.
At once accessible, entertaining, and informative, the book breaks new ground by showcasing powerful photographs of an ecosystem - and a homeland - in transition; images that could only have been created out on the ice, often under extreme conditions, frequently in the company of traditional Inuit hunters, and regularly in close proximity to apex predators. Complementing the photographs are extended captions and short personal essays.
As a well-published photographer and book author, veteran Arctic expedition leader, and natural historian with a master's degree from Yale, I have spent a lifetime honing all of the skills needed to photograph wildlife, landscapes, and indigenous people in the world’s most remote places. Uniquely qualified to portray the impact of climate change on the polar regions and their inhabitants, human and animal alike, in Last Days of the Great Ice I intertwine art and science with a close personal familiarity with my subject matter. The result is a captivating portrait of the vanishing ice and how its disappearance affects the iconic polar bear and the Inuit.
Today the general public is highly aware of the portentious changes taking place in the Arctic, and there is a growing sense of urgency that something must be done to prevent the ice from disappearing. Indeed, an answer to the unfolding crisis is provided by the Inuit themselves, who offer the rest of the world a powerful message of hope. The public is ready for a new and compelling portrait of this beautiful yet fragile world, and Last Days of the Great Ice shows not only what we are losing but how we can save it.
Witnesses to the Last Days of the Great Ice (click to enlarge).