Mont Blanc climate change impact revealed in photos 100 years apart

Large scale of ice loss in the region shown by images

Exactly 100 years after the Swiss pilot and photographer Walter Mittelholzer flew over Mont Blanc in a biplane to photograph the landscape around the mountain in southern France, a team of scientists have recreated his photographs to show the impact that climate change.

A century on and researchers from the University of Dundee took three photographs to show the impact on the mountain's glaciers.

Using a process called monoplotting to triangulate the original camera position in airspace Dr Kieran Baxter and Dr Alice Watterson from the 3DVisLab at Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art and Design, flew over the Mont Blanc massif in August.

The pair used the peaks and spires of the alpine landscape as anchor points to find the geolocation of where the historical shots were taken.

The resulting photographs of the Argentiere, Mont Blanc Bossons and Mer de Glace glaciers show the large scale of ice loss in the region.

Equipped with waypoints from the digital analysis and multiple GPS devices, Dr Baxter hung from the side of the helicopter as it hovered at a height of around 4,700 metres, just below the summit of Mont Blanc, to capture the images.

“The scale of the ice loss was immediately evident as we reached altitude but it was only by comparing the images side-by-side that the last 100 years of change were made visible. It was both a breathtaking and heartbreaking experience, particularly knowing that the melt has accelerated massively in the last few decades," he said.

“Mittelholzer played a key role in popularising commercial air travel in Switzerland, an industry which ironically came to contribute to the warming of the climate and the detriment of the alpine landscapes that the pioneering pilot knew and loved. Unless we drastically reduce our dependence on fossil fuels, there will be little ice left to photograph in another hundred years.”