Glaciers are under threat. These majestic ice structures are a reflection of climate change, and photographs of their evolution are a case in point. There is even a ‘Doomsday Glacier’ that is in danger and whose collapse would be fatal to many coastal areas. Photographing and documenting glaciers is something we have been doing for decades, and the Norwegians took their mission of photographing glaciers very seriously since shortly before the start of World War II.

Interestingly, the Nazis thought these photos could be the key and they carefully hid them while Hitler’s troops invaded. Now these photos have been found and offer a bit of hope in an increasingly warming world.

Documenting glaciersIn 1937, Norwegian whaler Lars Christensen decided to document East Antarctica by creating the first maps of the area. He took over 2,000 aerial photographs using a Zeiss automatic camera mounted on the underside of his Stinson Reliant Poton, a monoplane with a seaplane system and a range of 1,200 kilometers. However, the images were never published due to the outbreak of World War II.

Operation Weserübung. The years 1939 and 1940 were years of rapid expansion for Nazi Germany. Hitler deployed his troops in different neighboring countries, and Denmark and Norway played a leading role in his strategy. The two countries were no match for the German war machine and were good strategic points not only for the European campaign, but also for the war against England. Thus began Operation Weserübungn, a blitzkrieg attack on both Norway and Denmark on 9 April 1940.

In the case of Denmark, they quickly surrounded the royal palace from where the surrender to the Germans was signed. In Norway, German paratroopers captured airfields at Oslo and Stavanger, while several cruisers and destroyers ferried troops to the main coastal cities. Narvik was the key, but Hitler also saw Norway as a point of attack on Britain and an exit to the Atlantic. The Allies got wind of the operation, but no matter how hard they tried, they could not stop the Nazis.

hide and seek operation. So Norway was German territory throughout the conflict, but they were apparently in no mood to invade unconditionally, and once they learned of the operation they hid anything that might be of use to the Nazis. They must have thought that the photographs of East Antarctica might have strategic value (of course they would have, since the Allies had not been able to map the area), and they hid 2,200 photographs covering almost 2,000 kilometres of coastline.

Data collecting. The truth is that they have not been discovered until recently, so they have made an effort for this task. When researchers from the University of Copenhagen learned that this expedition had taken place, they started searching the archives and found the photos in an archive in Tromsø. In addition to researchers from the University of Copenhagen, researchers from the Norwegian Polar Institute, the Arctic University of Norway and the Institute for Environmental Earth Sciences in France also participated in the research.

A sample of 130 photos from 1937 was compared with other photos taken by Australian researchers between 1950 and 1974, as well as recent samples, to create a sort of timeline of the glacier’s last 87 years. This information was also converted into a 3D model that allows us to see this evolution, and what’s interesting is what the team concluded.

BasisAnders Bjørk is a professor at the University of Copenhagen and believes this paper is of great value because “long glacial time series improve our ability to make more accurate models of future ice change, as the models are based on historical observations.” And the fact that these are photographs of an area that was not systematically studied until the 1990s makes it even more valuable.

Mads Dømgaard, a PhD student at the same university, says the results “show that sea ice conditions are weakening, making glacier ice tongues more vulnerable and unable to grow as large as seen in images from 1937.”

Refreshing. But these photos are also a breath of fresh air. Yes, glacier conditions have changed in the nearly century since the photos were taken, but Dømgaard sounds positive, commenting that despite the increasing melt records, “it’s refreshing to look at a region where glaciers have remained stable for nearly a century.” . But as we said, the stagnation is clearly visible and can be seen in the photos.

The researchers say the documents allow them to observe that the rate of ice flow has not changed much in recent years, and that some have lost thickness, but in recent years it has remained constant. A few months ago, this news was not so encouraging for Greenland glaciers, as a study by the same university concluded that the melting of Greenland glaciers has increased fivefold in the last 20 years, losing 25 meters per year.

Then joy passes through the neighborhood. Or by the glaciers.

Images | University of Copenhagen, Nature, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center from Greenbelt

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