Exceptional pictures seize the variety of Earth’s ice formations

An enormous, unimaginable icicle. Starkly uncovered mountain slopes. Billion-year-old rocks behind a lone iceberg. And the view from inside a glacial tunnel.

These 4 stunning and shifting pictures come from a brand new e-book, Our Frozen Planet by Michael Hambrey and Jürg Alean. It units out to have fun the cryosphere – the collective noun that describes the world’s ice in all its varieties, from glaciers and ice sheets to permafrost and snow cowl.

The principle picture reveals ice that has fashioned round a waterfall close to Giswil, Switzerland. Icicles rising from the highest have fused with ice formations rising from the underside to create an enormous ice column.

Pictured above is Bryce Canyon in Utah. The course of a slope strongly impacts how snow is distributed in mountainous areas. Virtually all of the snow has melted on the south-facing slope of this ridge, however a considerable cowl stays on the shady, north-facing left facet.

The picture above reveals Nordvestfjord, in Northeast Greenland Nationwide Park, the place a number of the world’s oldest metamorphic rock varieties a backdrop to an iceberg mirrored within the deep fjord’s waters.

In Switzerland’s Vadret da Morteratsch glacier (pictured above), meltwater has carved a tunnel by means of the snow and ice. The picture was taken from contained in the tunnel in winter when no meltwater was flowing by means of.