Before & After: Stunning Photos Reveal How Arctic Glaciers Are Disappearing

Before & After: Stunning Photos Reveal How Arctic Glaciers Are Disappearing

Swedish photographer Christian Åslund has returned to the Arctic’s Svalbard archipelago to visually capture the harsh reality of climate change. Revisiting glacier sites he first photographed in 2002—and comparing them to historical archives dating back to the early 1900s—Åslund reveals a dramatic and alarming retreat of Arctic glaciers.

In his 2024 expedition, Åslund aligned his camera to match century-old photos taken from identical locations. What was once towering walls of ice are now barren landscapes, stripped of snow and glacial mass. “The difference is shocking,” he says. “These glaciers are not growing back. They are being pushed further and further by climate change.”

According to the NOAA, the Arctic has warmed twice as fast as the rest of the globe since 2000—and some reports estimate up to four times faster. This warming is shrinking sea ice at an average rate of 12.2% per decade, based on NASA data.

Professor Julienne Stroeve, an expert in polar observation at University College London, warns: “The Arctic’s end-of-summer ice cover is now 40–50% less than it was a century ago. If warming continues, we may see the first ice-free summer by 2050, a climate state not experienced in over 130,000 years.”

Åslund, working with the Norwegian Polar Institute and Greenpeace, aims to make climate change visible. Despite his photographic evidence, some skeptics still doubt the reality. “Even in 2024, people say the photos are fake,” he says. “But I took them during the same seasons and from the exact same spots.”

His haunting images serve as a visual warning. As glaciers vanish and sea levels rise, the time for global climate action is now. “I fear in 10 years, much of what we photographed will be gone forever,” Åslund concludes.

A side-by-side comparison of Arctic glaciers: left side showing a 1920s-era massive glacier in Svalbard, right side showing the same landscape in 2024 with bare rocks and melted ice, dramatic sky, documentary style photography