Our visual evidence is a deep dive into the historic changes happening in alpine, Arctic, and Antarctic regions. Through single-frame still photography, we have produced a beautiful and extensive portfolio about the cryosphere. At the same time, we have, since 2007, produced an archive of time-lapse images showing how the ice has changed as a consequence of a changing climate.

As many as forty-three time-lapse cameras have been photographing at twenty-four sites simultaneously. Thus far, our archive of time-lapse evidence, edited into stunning videos, amounts to 1.3 million frames.

EIS gained worldwide fame in 2012 with the release of the award-winning documentary film Chasing Ice, produced by Exposure Labs. The film is available for purchase, may be licensed for home and group screenings (discounts for educators), and may be found on iTunes and Netflix.

EIS imagery is estimated to have impacted over 150 million people globally.

Chasing Ice team at Sundance Film Festival

The Chasing Ice team at Sundance Film Festival
(L-R) Adam LeWinter, Tad Pfeffer, James Balog, Jeff Orlowski, Svavar Jónatansson

This short video, including clips from the award-winning documentary film Chasing Ice, offers a peek at the Extreme Ice Survey team in the field. This footage was shot in Greenland, Iceland, and Alaska.

Join the Extreme Ice Survey (EIS) team on an expedition to South Georgia Island as we add the Southern Hemisphere to our network of time-lapse cameras by deploying 18 cameras on South Georgia Island and the Antarctic Peninsula.

View our 7-year time-lapse video of Alaska’s Mendenhall glacier. You’ll see that the glacier “deflates”— like air releasing from a balloon. Notice how ice melts at the glacier’s edge, while thinning at the same time. Red lines indicate the size of the glacier in 2007, and again in 2014.

Watch how the Sólheimajökull Glacier in Iceland is retreating due to a combination of stream erosion and ice melt. The cracks (“crevasses”) that you see forming parallel to the flow indicate that the glacier is also spreading out (thinning) as it flows forward.