Photo Exhibit Highlights Shrinking Glaciers

BOSTON -- If a picture is worth a thousand words, then a new photography exhibit at the Museum of Science is saying a lot about global warming.

NewsCenter 5's David Brown reported that a Boston-based photojournalist has chronicled the retreat of many of the world's glaciers in pictures.

VIDEO: Exhibit Highlights Shrinking Glaciers

The photographs in the exhibit Double Exposure compare pictures of the glaciers taken in the 1930s mounted next to the same photos taken recently.

"The pictures tell a story of dramatic ice melt in the north country. There are places in this series where the glacier has disappeared," photographer David Arnold said.

In the 1930s, explorer and Museum of Science founding director Brad Washburn photographed some of the world's most remote and breathtaking landscapes. Arnold recaptured the exact locations, using identical camera angles and altitudes to visually depict the impact of global warming.

"The five glaciers actually feed down into Blackstone Bay, and as you can see, all the glaciers have receded," he said.

Many of the receding glaciers are from Alaska. In 1938, the Guyot Glacier had a gigantic stingray-like tail. But today, the glacier has retreated 14 miles and lost more than 26 trillion gallons of water.

The iconic Matterhorn was covered in snow in 1960. About 45 years later, Arnold's photograph showed a much darker mountain riddled with rock debris from the current freeze and thaw cycles.

In 1938 The Valdez Glacier crept to the ocean's edge. But today, it has retreated two miles and thinned by 34 stories.

"If we don't turn the monster around, they're going to be as haunting, I swear, as some of the dinosaur exhibits in this museum," Arnold said.

The Museum of Science exhibit will be on display through June 22.