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A sheet of ice the size of Manhattan tumbled into the sea.

Photographer James Balog and his crew were hanging out near a glacier when their camera captured something extraordinary. They were in Greenland, gathering footage from the time-lapse they'd positioned all around the Arctic Circle for the last several years.

They were also there to shoot scenes for a documentary. And while they were hoping to capture some cool moments on camera, no one expected a huge chunk of a glacier to snap clean off and slide into the ocean right in front of their eyes.


science, calving, glaciers, climate changeA glacier falls into the sea.Exposure Labs

ocean swells, sea level, erosion, going greenMassive swells created by large chunks of glacier falling away.Exposure Labs

It was the glacier calving event ever filmed.

For nearly an hour and 15 minutes, Balog and his crew stood by and watched as a piece of ice the size of lower Manhattan — but with ice-equivalent buildings that were two to three times taller than that — simply melted away.

geological catastrophe, earth, glacier meltA representation demonstrating the massive size of ice that broke off into the sea.Exposure Labs

As far as anyone knows, this was an unprecedented geological catastrophe, and they caught the entire thing on tape. It won't be the last time something like this happens either.

But once upon a time, Balog was openly skeptical about that "global warming" thing.

Balog had a reputation since the early 1980s as a conservationist and environmental photographer. And for nearly 20 years, he'd scoffed at the climate change heralds shouting, "The sky is falling! The sky is falling!"

"I didn't think that humans were capable of changing the basic physics and chemistry of this entire, huge planet. It didn't seem probable, it didn't seem possible," he explained in the 2012 documentary film "Chasing Ice."

There was too much margin of error in the computer simulations, too many other pressing problems to address about our beautiful planet. As far as he was concerned, these melodramatic doomsayers were distracting from the real issues.

That was then.

Greenland, Antarctica, glacier calvingThe glacier ice continues to erode away.Exposure Labs

In fact, it wasn't until 2005 that Balog became a believer.

He was sent on a photo expedition of the Arctic by National Geographic, and that first northern trip was more than enough to see the damage for himself.

"It was about actual tangible physical evidence that was preserved in the ice cores of Greenland and Antarctica," he said in a 2012 interview with ThinkProgress. "That was really the smoking gun showing how far outside normal, natural variation the world has become. And that's when I started to really get the message that this was something consequential and serious and needed to be dealt with."

Some of that evidence may have been the fact that more Arctic landmass has melted away in the last 20 years than the previous 10,000 years.

Watch the video of the event of the glacier calving below:

- YouTubeyoutu.be

Balog has continued documenting changes in the Earth's seas, ice sheets, and other environmental indicators of climate change and spoke with CBS about his work in 2024. "When I started the extreme ice survey, climate change was still seen as a pretty abstract thing," Balog said. "It was something that was going to happen 20 or 30 or 50 years from now and my god when you could start to realize no, it's happening right now right in front of us. It put a real marker in time to say this is now, this is real."

Balog hopes that his photographic record will serve as a record of the present and a message to the future.

"I want to be able to say to those people of the distant future look not everybody in this time in you know 2024 was terribly conscious or cared about climate change," he said, "but I want to be able to say that this mind, these eyes, and this heart was paying attention."

- YouTubewww.youtube.com

This article originally appeared 10 years ago and has been updated.

Photo by Vince Gx on Unsplash

A sunny day at the Saarland Glacier near the North Pole.

When Richard Krishfield began his career fixing office equipment, he had no idea it would take him to the ends of the Earth.

Then, in 1986, Krishfield, who had spent years working on computers and electronics for businesses, was asked down to the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute (WHOI) in Massachusetts to work on one of their instruments — a conductivity, temperature, and depth (or CTD) device that collects data from its seat on the ocean floor.

It wasn't the work Krishfield was used to, but it offered an intriguing promise of adventure.


"I thought well, jeez, it might be kind of fun to work on ships and travel the world for a few years," Krishfield says over the phone. 35 years later, he's still doing it.

For over 85 years, the WHOI has been at the forefront of oceanographic study and innovation. Their scientists, engineers, and innovators routinely travel around the globe — from oil spill sites to exotic coastal shores to underwater volcanoes — collecting valuable data and learning how our world works.

Krishfield's work with the WHOI has brought him to some of the world's most extreme places, including the North Pole.

Unlike the iconic images of a massive, globe-spanning, elf-employing, gift-making, reindeer-housing operation run by a jolly man in a red suit, the real North Pole is home to navigators and researchers who brave some of the coldest weather on the planet in the name of science.

Living and working at the North Pole is an intense experience that takes a physical toll on those who venture out there.

Every year, Krishfield and his team spend months at a time camping out in the Arctic, setting up advanced observation instruments that send real-time data back to the WHOI. "Basically they’re sending back what you might consider the weather of the ocean," says Krishfield. And setting them up is no easy task.

"You’re living in a tent on the ice," says Krishfield. "And you don't have things like forklifts, so you have to muscle heavy equipment on and off small airplanes." Those airplanes land on makeshift runways that are cleared out by workers, too. In order for the ice to be thick enough to land a plane on, most of the work has to happen when it's as cold as possible.

"You have to get acclimated to the minus-20 or minus-30 degree temperatures and dress appropriately and know what to do," Krishfield says.

Over his 35-year career, Krishfield has seen firsthand just how much the Arctic is changing.

"Obviously the ice is melting," he says. "And in the 30 years I’ve been going up there, it's very clear how much."

One of the instruments Krishfield has helped set up is a buoy that sits on ice floes and dangles sensors into the water below to measure temperature, salinity, and current velocity of the ocean. When he first started installing them, he and his team would look for ice floes that were up to 4 meters thick.

"Then after a couple years we were looking for 2- to 3-meter floes," says Krishfield. "Then we were looking for 1-and-ahalf to 1-meter floes, and then this last summer, we were out there, and there was hardly any thick ice at all."

Greenland, research, global warming, Arctic, human footprint

Photo taken from a plane over the Jacobshavn Glacier Front in Ilulissat, Greenland

Image via U.S. Department of State/Wikimedia Commons.

Of course, Krishfield and the scientific community have been reporting shrinking ice in the Arctic for a long time. Studies confirmed long ago that the Arctic is warming, that the ice is melting, and just how catastrophic the result of that could be for the Earth's climate and ecosystems.

If the Arctic becomes a seasonal ice cap (where ice melts during the summer and refreezes during the winter), it could throw the planet's weather systems into utter chaos. Scientists estimate that could be the case by 2050.

"Probably sooner than that," says Krishfield.

You don't need to look at satellite data to see how much the Arctic has changed, Krishfield says.

"I look back and think of all the trips we used to do back in the summertime ... it was really beautiful out there," he recalls. "It’d be bright and sunny, and it was just beautiful."

"Now that the ice has melted away quite a bit, what you end up having is very grey, dull, dreary, and sort of foggy days out there. So the whole climate of it has changed."

It's hard to imagine that human beings could have any effect on the North Pole — as far away from it as we are — but we can and we do.

Arctic sea ice loss has been directly linked to carbon emissions, and saving the Arctic is a matter of cutting down those emissions quickly and dramatically. The North Pole is so extreme and so far away that we hardly ever think about it — let alone wrestle with the true global impact of what would happen if we let it melt. Odds are, the North Pole only comes up in conversation around Christmas — and not exactly in a "lets save the Arctic ice cap" context.

If you find hope in one thing though, consider the fact that human beings really can have an impact on the Arctic, for worse — or for better. Our actions have brought the Arctic Ocean to the brink, but it's the actions we take next, along with the hard work of scientists and researchers like Krishfield, that save it.

This is probably the picture that comes to mind when someone starts to talk about Greenland.

Photo by Joe Raedle/Getty Images.


Stark, pale blue glaciers. High, rocky mountains.

Greenland is a poster child of climate change.

A scientist studying layers of ice in a glacier. Photo by Joe Raedle/Getty Images.

It sometimes seems like the only images we see are giant fields of ice — and maybe, if you're lucky, a scientist in snow gear plunging an indescribable instrument into a snow drift, like some sort of future explorer on a distant planet.

It's easy to talk about Greenland as if it were some alien world.

But Greenland isn't just glaciers and snow.

An aerial view of Ilulissat, Greenland. Photo by Joe Raedle/Getty Images.

While it's true that about 80% of the country is covered by glaciers, many small towns and cities dot the coastlines.

More than 55,000 people call Greenland home.

Loretta Henriksen with rhubarb gathered from her garden. Photo by Joe Raedle/Getty Images.

About 16,000 of them live in Nuuk, Greenland's largest city.

Photo by Joe Raedle/Getty Images.

Nuuk is also Greenland's capital and home to the University of Greenland.

In 2013, photographer Joe Raedle went to Greenland, where he found children playing on playgrounds...

Playtime in Nuuk. Photo by Joe Raedle/Getty Images.

Families eating together in a cafe at a mall...

Photo by Joe Raedle/Getty Images.

A young woman on a set swings...

Photo by Joe Raedle/Getty Images.

And people relaxing with cups of coffee.

Photo by Joe Raedle/Getty Images.

Out in the country, Raedle also snapped a shot of Greenlander Pilu Nielson playing with his dog near the family farm.

Photo by Joe Raedle/Getty Images.

Nielson's family raises sheep and grows potatoes near the city of Qaqortoq.

As it turns out, Greenland can be, well, pretty green.

Trout caught in a stream near Qaqortoq. Photo by Joe Raedle/Getty Images.

And climate change ... may actually be making the land greener?

Arnaq Egede walks along her family farm, the largest in Greenland. Photo by Joe Raedle/Getty Images.

That's part of what Raedle went to Greenland to document: how the people are adapting to changes in their environment.

It probably doesn't come as a surprise that in recent years, Greenland has been getting a lot warmer.

Two men playing guitar in the summer sun, 2013. Photo by Joe Raedle/Getty Images.

The trend was already apparent when Raedle visited in 2013, and it hasn't let up since. In, fact, in June 2016, Greenland's capital hit its highest ever recorded temperature.

How climate change is affecting Greenland is more complicated than the thermometer, though.

On the one hand, climate change has been hurting traditional hunting practices. On the other, warmer summers have extended farmers' growing season.

A supermarket in Greenland. Photo by Joe Raedle/Getty Images.

While Greenland's famous glaciers have been shrinking at a record pace, that's also opened up new land to farming and mining.

A geologist looking for samples to better understand the glacial retreat. Photo by Joe Raedle/Getty Images.

Greenland also has rich mineral deposits, including uranium, which could bring jobs — or exploit local workers. Many people, including some in Greenland's government, are being cautious about jumping in.

But climate change's biggest effect on Greenland may be the ocean.

Photo by Joe Raedle/Getty Images.

Almost 90% of Greenland's export economy is made up of fish and shellfish, especially cold-water shrimp. Climate change may bring new species, but it may also endanger these precious stocks.

In a perhaps bittersweet twist, Greenland is also starting to get a lot of climate change tourism.

Photo by Uriel Sinai/Getty Images.

Tourists want to see the glaciers before they're gone. In 2010, Greenland had an estimated 60,000 tourists, according to Smithsonian Magazine — that's more tourists than there are Greenlanders!

Climate change is going to change a lot in Greenland, but Greenlanders seem adaptable.

Photo by Joe Raedle/Getty Images.

"We're used to change," said Pilu Nielson (the farmer playing with his dog). "We learn to adapt to whatever comes."

It's easy to feel like climate change is something that'll only really matter in a hundred or a thousand years.

But these pictures show it's changing lives now, especially in Greenland.

The North Pole was once one of the most inaccessible places on Earth.

Robert Peary's 1908 expedition to the Arctic. Photo by Hulton Archive/Getty Images.


Ships trying to sail anywhere near it risked getting permanently frozen in its vast, icy prison.

Fridtjof Nansen's ship, stuck in ice. Photo from Fridtjof Nansen/Wikimedia Commons.

Going on an expedition meant being at sea for at least a few months (maybe even years) and battling horrible cold, wind, snow, and ice, not to mention starvation. Not everyone who set out made it home again; whole expeditions sometimes just ... disappeared.

The crossing was so intense that humans actually reached the South Pole first. It really says a lot when Antarctica is the easier of your two options.

The first verified expedition to the North Pole didn't happen until 1926.

Though U.S. Navy engineer Robert Peary claimed to have made it to the pole in 1909, the first verified, undisputed claim to that achievement didn't happen until Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen flew over it in an airship in 1926.

Roald Amundsen. Image from Wikimedia Commons.

Amundsen's team had also been the first to reach the South Pole, which I'm pretty sure means he owns the Earth now.

Before Mr. Roald "Fur Coat" Amundsen, however, mapmakers had been trying to guess what the Arctic looked like for centuries.

See the stone thing in the center and the four islands surrounding the North Pole in this map from 1595?

The red, green, and yellow blobs around the edges are Canada, Europe, and Asia, respectively. The blobs in the middle are ... Mordor? Image from Gerardus Mercator/Wikimedia Commons.

Those are there because mapmaker Gerardus Mercator seemed to think there might be some sort of lost world up there.

By the late 1600s, mapmakers had a better idea of what the pole looked like, but Greenland and Canada still seemed to cause some conundrums.

1680 map by Moses Pitt. Original image from Moses Pitt/Toronto Public Library/Wikimedia Commons.

Like, I'm pretty sure Greenland and Canada don't actually connect to each other.

Original image from Moses Pitt/Wikimedia Commons.

And this mapmaker in 1720 seems to have admitted ignorance, shrugged his shoulders, and just stopped drawing.

C. G. Zorgdrager's 1720 map of the North Pole. Original image from National Library of Norway/Wikimedia Commons.

Some maps, like this one from 1762, made some ... interesting guesses at what the North Pole looks like.

Jean Javier's 1762 map of North America. Image from Jean Lattre/Wikimedia Commons

Interesting guesses like "Maybe future-Alaska isn't a thing."

Image from Jean Lattre/Wikimedia Commons.

And "What if I put a big ol' sea here in the middle of what will one day be Seattle and British Columbia?"

I'm pretty sure I'd remember if Seattle were in the middle of a giant bay. Image from Jean Lattre/Wikimedia Commons.

Even years later, in 1776, Alaska was still proving troublesome to mapmakers.

1776 map. Image from Zatta/Wikimedia Commons.

I mean REALLY.

?!?!?!!!!! Image from Zatta/Wikimedia Commons.

By the 1880s, at least, we knew more or less what was at the North Pole (nothing but water and ice).

Although this map still has a few blank places at the very top of Greenland and Canada.

Those Aleutian Islands look a little short, too. An 1882 map. Image from the New York Public Library.

Good job, 1880s.

Thanks to those explorers and technology, we now know that the Arctic looks like this:

Image from Uwe Dedering/Wikimedia Commons.

But — would those explorers of a century ago, the ones who spent months and years traversing its icy waters, even recognize the place if they saw it today?

In a recent interview, oceanographer Peter Wadhams told The Independent that the Arctic may be on track to be ice-free for the first time in 100,000 years.

Climate change has been consistently reducing the sea ice around the Arctic Ocean for decades, to the extent that the same passages and channels that once baffled and trapped early explorers are now so ice-free that they're being considered for use as shipping lanes.

In late 2015, the Russian icebreaker Vaygach completed a trip along the north coast of Siberia in just seven and a half days. Image from Dudinka_Apu/Wikimedia Commons.

Our maps may be a lot better now, but that doesn't mean we should abandon the Arctic's air of mystery and adventure.

After all, it's still home to seals that look like something out of a Tim Burton film...

Yup, that's definitely the seal version of Beetlejuice. Image from Michael Cameron/Wikimedia Commons.

...not to mention weird methane that seeps from deep in the seabed and these fire-breathing lakes. So even though we now know where we're going when it comes to the North Pole, there's still plenty up there left to discover.

Last year, 174 countries pledged to help fight climate change at the COP21 climate change conference in Paris. Individual people can help, too, by reducing their energy consumption and not only voting for politicians who don't think climate change is a hoax, but making sure they stick to their agreements after they're in office.

If we can accomplish that, we can keep the Arctic cold — and help preserve for future generations the air of mystery and adventure that those old (admittedly faulty) maps embody.