“Civilization is like a thin layer of ice upon a deep ocean of chaos and darkness.”
Werner Herzog
•CryoExchange Research Matters
•Turning Green for Greenland
•Snow in Scotland and Svalbard
•Andes to the Antarctic
•Modelling & Moving Mountains
•Maduro & MadDonald?
•Dame Jacinda FRSGS
• Reader Offer: Unfrozen plus news, books, and more…
At an annual conference at the University of Stirling last Summer, I spoke about the work of RSGS to the whole of SAGES – a very broad research group engaging many of the geography departments throughout the Scottish Universities. It has been a number of years since we last worked together to produce a whole magazine but many of you will be familiar with aspects of their work as we do feature their research quite regularly. Although their research extends from local river pollution to natural hazards in the Himalayas, we decided to focus this magazine on the work of the Cryosphere Team and the research on glaciers around the world. I am grateful to Anna Crawford and Keir Nichols in particular for helping secure and edit contributions. Topics range from the importance of glacial melt water for freshwater resources, the impact of sea ice on shipping and even glaciers on other planets. This focus on ice brought to mind the visit of Olafur Grimsson, former President of Iceland to our office in 2017. He was being slightly tongue in cheek, but claimed some credit for the Paris Climate Agreement because of a moment when the French President went to Iceland. Grimsson took him by helicopter to see an Icelandic Glacier, but to make a point he got the helicopter to land where the glacier snout was when he was a child and the entire entourage were then faced with a 45 minute walk uphill to where the glacier sits today.
However, we didn’t want to just focus the magazine on disappearing glaciers, so as ever we have attempted to take a much broader perspective and since several articles refer to Greenland, we have brought it right up-to-date with some of the geopolitical commentary that has emerged about Greenland in recent weeks.
As we share this edition I would like to take a moment to thank all those who have written in since the last Geographer on letters and postal services, to share their stories and tell us about themselves. We are very keen to reflect the whole of the membership in our ongoing archive and delighted that so many of our friends and members have taken the time to write and to contribute to this magazine.
Mike Robinson, Chief Executive, RSGS
RSGS, Lord John Murray House, 15-19 North Port, Perth, PH1 5LU
tel: 01738 455050
email: enquiries@rsgs.org www.rsgs.org
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The views expressed in this newsletter are not necessarily those of the RSGS.
Cover & masthead image: Valdemaras D. via Unsplash
In December, British explorer Alice Morrison became the first recorded person to walk the entire length of Saudi Arabia from north to south, entirely on foot. Her world-first expedition, which began on 1st January 2025 and concluded on 15th December 2025, covered a total of 2,195km over 112 days.
Accompanied by her camels, Juicy and Lulu, and supported by a small specialist team, Alice completed the final stretch on Monday 15th December in Najran, on the Saudi–Yemen border. This journey completes the second and final stage of her crossing. Earlier this year, Alice walked the first 930km from the Jordanian border to Madinah. She split the expedition over two winter seasons, as the full route was too long to tackle in a single season due to extreme heat and the month of Ramadan.
The Schools Residential Outdoor Education (Scotland) Bill passed its final Holyrood hurdle to become law in December 2025. The member’s bill guarantees every pupil in Scotland will have access to a week of residential outdoor education and was voted through by a majority of MSPs after a stage three parliamentary debate. Now that this bill is set to become law, every pupil will be able to enjoy an outdoor education experience which will boost their physical and mental wellbeing.
If you would like to make a difference in 2026, consider leaving a legacy to RSGS. As a small charity, even a modest gift in your will can make a massive difference to the RSGS’s ability to inspire people, inform positive change and champion the best of science and geographical endeavour. Learn everything about the difference your legacy could make at www.rsgs.org/legacies.
Ordnance Survey (OS) has recently released new and highly detailed data on cycle lanes, which will help local authorities support Active Travel priorities. Through Active Travel the Government is aiming to increase the number of local journeys being walked, wheeled or cycled by 2030 to improve public health, reduce congestion and carbon emissions, and strengthen local economies.
The new data tells users where cycle lane infrastructure is located, and other key information, such as direction of travel, modal width and minimum width, and where it links to associated roads or paths.
In December, we presented RSGS Honorary Fellowship to Lexi Parfitt. Lexi leads the advocacy, campaigns and communications strategy for Water Witness International, working tirelessly to mobilise the public and political action on the global water crisis.
Lexi has over 20 years of experience leading public engagement and advocacy campaigns for organisations including WWF, SAMH (Scottish Action for Mental Health), and SCIAF (Caritas Scotland), working on issues ranging from climate change and gender to tax justice and health inequalities.
Two of our regular volunteers, Sam Chakraverty and Fiona Dempster, have recently given talks on behalf of the RSGS to local audiences.
In January, Sam gave an illustrated talk to the Inner Wheel of Perth on the history and broad-ranging work of the Society supplemented by a selection of maps from our collection, while in February, Fiona presented to the Scottish Women’s Institute in Inchture.
We have several more talks scheduled over the coming months, in Dunblane, Kinross and Cupar. If talking about the work of the Society is something that interests you and you can volunteer time to do so, then please contact us at enquiries@rsgs.org or call HQ.
The 2025-26 Inspiring People programme of 90 public talks at 13 Local Groups across Scotland, allowed RSGS audiences to hear from some brilliant speakers. January kicked off with a bang as we had two speakers in one week, biologist and filmmaker Dan O’Neill, talking about snow leopards in the mountains of Kyrgyzstan and Mongolia, and the Seas the Day team, Miriam Payne and Jess Rowe, talking about their feat to row across the Pacific Ocean from Peru to Australia. Researcher Derek Fabel shared how a nuclear fallout exposed a fake ‘antique’ whisky. Writer Dawn Hollis took the audience on a historic journey of mountains before mountaineering.
In February, cyclist Mark Wedgwood told the story of his trans-continental adventure cycling from the town of Boring in Oregon to the village of Dull in Scotland. Explorer, Alice Morrison, spoke about setting out to be the first person to walk Saudi Arabia from North to South since 1932, sharing stories of the people she encountered. Author of ‘Night Train to Odessa’, Jen Stout, gave a moving journalistic insight into wartime Ukraine. John Goodlad told the extraordinary story of how salt fish from Shetland became one of Europe’s staple foods, powered an economic boom, and inspired artists, writers and musicians.
The programme concluded with writer and wildlife gardening expert Kate Bradbury sharing inspiring ideas to transform your garden into a haven for biodiversity. Vicky Allen and Jackie Kemp explored the joys of wild swimming. Orkney-based shipwreck hunter Kevin Heath dived into the gripping history of two remarkable vessels, S.S. Active and S.S. Scotia and their vital roles in Scotland’s polar legacy. And Jack Capener spoke about his trip to the Andes, which led him to spend a year and a half living in remote Indigenous communities in Ecuador and Peru.
Many thanks to everyone who came to our talks this season; it was fantastic to see so many large and appreciative audiences. We look forward to planning our 2026-27 programme, and hosting everyone again from September. If you have suggestions or recommendations about possible speakers for next season, please contact us at enquiries@rsgs.org
We had a brilliant night for our Christmas event A Wild Night In at Perth Concert Hall on 5th December! Thank you to everyone who joined us to hear from our four speakers, Mandi Stark, Doug Allan, Libby Penman* and Gordon Buchanan, who shared some of their inspiring stories, and of course some stunning images and footage too. *Libby very kindly shared some of hers in a wonderful centre spread, see pages 22 & 23.
Inspiring People speakers Miriam Payne and Jess Rowe from the Seas the Day team, have created a rum in collaboration with the Adventures Drink Co, inspired by their 8,000-mile unsupported row across the Pacific, and to fund their expedition. Bottles are available to buy at adventurersdrinks.co.uk.
RSGS Medallist Lewis Pugh recently climbed Mount Kenya with the intention to swim in a lake beneath the Lewis Glacier, to shine a light on how quickly Africa’s glaciers are disappearing, and why the world’s remaining ice is so precious. However, just before he reached the summit, he was informed that the swim could not go ahead and that filming near the glacier was not allowed. Following his visit he spoke to the UN Environment Assembly in Nairobi, to share what he saw on the mountain, and why protecting glaciers is so urgent.
The Scottish Parliament has recently voted 90 to 26 to advance the Ecocide (Scotland) Bill, placing Scotland on track to become the first UK nation to criminalise severe environmental destruction, in such a way that is either reckless or intentional. The Bill will now proceed to Stage 2 for detailed scrutiny, before a final Stage 3 vote. If approved, it will receive Royal Assent and become law.
We got a lovely Christmas gift from our Baker-in-Residence in December – a cake in the shape of our office in Perth! Thank you to Susan Christie for her generous present, it was (almost) too nice to cut.
A documentary titled Out of Ice follows environmental artist Elizabeth Ogilvie’s long-term engagement with water, focusing on ice as both material and subject. From 2006 to 2014, she based herself each spring in Ilulissat, a UNESCO World Heritage site in Northwest Greenland, uniquely significant for glaciological research due to the Sermeq Kujalleq glacier. Through repeated research trips and collaborations with Inuit and local residents, she gained knowledge of ice’s physical properties and its central role in Arctic life, identity and resilience. These encounters inspired installations addressing deep time, climate change and the Anthropocene, offering immersive spaces for reflection, debate and agency. Watch the full documentary: vimeo.com/elizabethogilvie/out-of-ice.
RSGS Fellow Professor Lorna Dawson was awarded a Damehood in the New Year’s Honours. Professor Dawson is head of the Centre for Forensic Soil Science at the James Hutton Institute, and her expertise has proved pivotal in many high-profile criminal cases.
Since 2008, every year conservationists have been covering the Presena glacier in northern Italy with huge reflective cloth sheets, to help prevent the snow beneath from melting. Conservationists say about 70 percent of the snow can be saved over the summer. It can take weeks to put these blankets in place, but the practice has caught on and is now becoming increasingly used across Europe to fit blankets at the end of the ski season and take them off again in September ready for the next winter’s snowfall.
Researchers from the University of Grenoble-Alpes and the University of Edinburgh recently used satellite data and the physics of how Antarctica’s glaciers move, to work out what the continent might look like beneath the ice. They found evidence of thousands of previously undiscovered hills and ridges and say their maps of some of Antarctica’s hidden mountain ranges are clearer than ever before. The researchers believe the new details could shed light on how Antarctica will respond to climate change - and what that means for sea-level rise.
“It’s incredibly humbling to receive the Shackleton Medal... I’ve always felt a huge connection to Scotland.”
During her visit to Glasgow last year, Dame Jacinda Ardern, the former Prime Minister of New Zealand, was presented with the RSGS Shackleton Medal in recognition of her outstanding example of compassion in global leadership.
During the presentation, RSGS Chief Executive Mike Robinson commented: “For the past 140 years our organisation has been working to better inform people about their world, inspire and influence positive action on geographical topics of all types, and to celebrate and showcase those people who have done something remarkable.
“I’m not sure any leader could easily survive being in charge during the covid pandemic – restricting people’s lives and enforcing emergency legislation. Ms Ardern showed a deep courage and moral conviction. Her example not only saved lives in New Zealand, but also rippled out well beyond her own shores, and influenced people around the world. Her defence of the science, strong leadership and consideration during the pandemic were commendable.
“Her response too to the Whakaari White Island volcanic eruption showed a measured determination and sensitivity which was commendable in the extreme. In addition, following the appalling shootings in Christchurch, her address to the nation on the evening of the shootings, as well as her actions over the subsequent days as the scale of the crisis unfolded, were widely praised, particularly in holding the
nation together.
“In addition, we applaud her commitment to climate action,with the Carbon Zero Bill and with her continuing efforts to resolve this global crisis issue, which remains one of the most critical issues of our generation, and one in which RSGS is heavily embedded.
“Too many people mistake kindness for weakness. Yet I would argue it requires real strength of character, real confidence in your own judgement and beliefs, and real self-assurance to open yourself up and to care about others. So it is with great pleasure that we present the Shackleton Medal to Dame Jacinda Ardern for her leadership, citizenship and empathy in so many critical arenas.”
Dame Jacinda Ardern was visiting Glasgow to attend the Scottish premiere of Prime Minister, which documents her time as New Zealand’s Prime Minister from 2017 to 2023, and to explore her family’s Scottish roots.
On receiving her medal, Ms Ardern expressed her thanks:
“It’s incredibly humbling to receive the Shackleton Medal, particularly on the basis upon which it is awarded and when looking at its other recipients. Shackleton has been a hero of mine since I was fourteen, and I’ve always felt a huge connection to Scotland, particularly from my Nana’s deep commitment to the place that her mother came from.”
We recently presented the RSGS President’s Medal to Associate Editors of the Scottish Geographical Journal, Rhian Thomas, Emma Laurie, and Martin Hurst. Working alongside the Journal’s Editor-in-Chief, Chris Philo, the contributions of Rhian, Emma, and Martin have been nothing short of exceptional. Building on the momentum established by previous editors, they have continued to expand and strengthen the Journal with every volume. As a result, the SGJ has achieved its highest ranking for impact and citation in its history.
We were pleased to present RSGS Honorary Fellowship to Sal Montgomery. Sal is an internationally renowned whitewater kayaker and expedition leader. She has led several world-first expeditions and has spoken numerous times in our Inspiring People talks programme, sharing stories from her adventures in Bhutan and British Columbia. She has also worked as a safety advisor for names such as Bear Grylls and Steve Backshall.
Discovery Point in Dundee has installed its first-ever solar panels facing south across the River Tay. Sophie Walker, Development Officer for the Trust and former RSGS team member, said: “There is just no way on Earth we’d have been able to pull this off without the work RSGS has done on the Climate Solutions training in the last few years. It was really this which helped us understand and make the case for solar power at Discovery Point – not least the fact that it will reduce the greenhouse gas pollution from the building by about 13.5 tonnes per year.”
The solar PVs are just the first glimmer of the Trust’s wider aspirations for Discovery Point over the next 3 years.
In November last year, we awarded the RSGS President’s Medal to Dr Adrian Hall. A First-Class Geography graduate from the University of St Andrews and an Honorary Research Fellow at the University of Edinburgh, Dr Hall has built an international reputation in the field of geomorphology, through work that has helped shape understanding of long-term landscape change.
A new film made for the Orkney Science Festival titled As Old as the Hills, visualises a timescale of geological change, over tens and hundreds of millions of years, in the setting of the north of Scotland. In the film, geologist and recent RSGS Medallist Adrian Hall is joined by Mara Gibb from Caithness and Katy Firth from Orkney on a grand scenic journey.
Through their travels they seek out fresh ways to visualise the vast expanse of geological time, in which mountains rise and fall, and land and sea are in continual slow change, a concept first developed by James Hutton, the 300th anniversary of whose birth will be celebrated this year.
In December, we were delighted to welcome many RSGS volunteers, from the Collections Team, Fair Maid’s House team and Local Groups, to the Fair Maid’s House in Perth, to thank them for the invaluable work they had done throughout 2025. We got the chance to reflect on everything our small charity had achieved over the year and celebrate some of the many highlights. Thank you to everyone who came along on the day and again for all your hard work and support! If you are interested in becoming an RSGS Volunteer, we would love to hear from you. Please get in touch at enquiries@rsgs.org or phone us at HQ.
Antarctic marine worms have been found to rely on gut bacteria to keep their internal liquids moving, researchers reported in Science Advances. Scientists studying three species of these worms, known as polychaetes, found that all three host an abundance of two types of bacteria, Meiothermus and Anoxybacillus, that were previously thought to exist only in warmer conditions. Further analysis suggests that these specialised bacteria, which are thought to be passed down by parents, produce proteins that prevent ice from forming in the worms’ gut by lowering the freezing point of water.
We were very sorry to receive news of the deaths of a number of members over the past few months. Ms AM Robertson, Catherine Gray and Robert Preece (previous Chair of the Inverness RSGS Group) were all members for more than 40 years, and all very kindly chose to leave gifts in their wills towards our work. Other members and Fellows who will be well known figures to many of you – Mary Cairncross FRSGS who was Chair of the Perth Local group and a regular volunteer in the Fair Maid’s House, Dr John Hulbert FRSGS who was previous Provost of Perth. Both played an integral part in securing RSGS’s move to the city in 2008. We were also sorry to hear about one of our longest standing members, Margaret Young FRSGS, latterly based in Australia, who had been a member for more than 64 years.
Staff at the UK’s Rothera Research Station in Antarctica received an iconic Royal Mail ‘lamp’ postbox bearing the King Charles III cypher, just in time for Christmas.
The new lamp box was requested by Kirsten Shaw, a station support assistant who runs the British Antarctic Territory Post Office for staff. Looking to upgrade the station’s hand-made post box, she wrote to His Majesty The King –prompting Royal Mail to arrange this particularly special delivery.
Gemma Burnside, Partnerships Manager, The Open University of Scotland
The latest Mock COP30 took place in Inverness on 10 November 2025, bringing together young people from across the Highlands to debate climate action and global co-operation. The event was held in the Highland Council Chambers in Inverness, coinciding with the UN’s COP30 in Brazil. This annual event was organised by The Open University in Scotland in partnership with SSEN Transmission, Highland One World and Developing the Young Workforce.
Mock Cop is a youth initiative which strongly connects to (and mirrors) the UN Model. Twelve schools from across the Highlands took part, with young people role playing as delegates of countries and organisations, to negotiate and develop real solutions to target the Climate Crisis.
This event provided an insight into how to influence climate action across the world and how modifications can be agreed. Young people were encouraged to debate and drive positive action and this event was a way to help amplify their voices at the highest levels.
The opportunity gave participants a great chance to meet key speakers, to engage with other climate confident peers from around Inverness, and to debate and negotiate resolutions. This demonstrated the passion, concern and ability of young people towards tackling action on the climate. Young people don’t often feel trusted, respected or able to contribute to such serious discussions, so we truly appreciate this platform to represent our generation.
With the Scottish landscape so clearly shaped by the glaciers of the past, it is unsurprising that this topic features prominently in the National 5 and Higher Geography course. In the Physical Environments section of the National 5 Geography course, schools have the option of studying either glaciation and coasts or rivers and limestone. The glaciation unit requires an understanding of the formation of arêtes, pyramidal peaks, corries, U-shaped valleys and truncated spurs, and students should be able to explain the processes involved in their formation, including plucking, abrasion and freeze/thaw weathering. Recognising glacial features on Ordnance Survey maps is also a common question. In the Higher Geography course, the range of physical features increases. As well as erosional features, students also need to study depositional features. Alongside erosional processes studied in National 5, they also need to understand the difference between glacial and fluvial-glacial deposition. Moving on to Advanced Higher Geography, students can incorporate these features into their own field studies, even if this is a little more complex to do than river or soil studies. For a significant number of students, glaciation is their favourite part of the Higher Geography course. It provides a context for linked topics such as energy production, tourism and our changing climate.
SAGES CryoExhange
The UN designation of 2025 as the International Year of Glaciers’ Preservation heightened global attention on the fate of the world’s glaciers and the consequences of their changes felt far beyond polar and mountain regions. Building on this interest, we are grateful for the opportunity to present The Geographer’s readership with a diverse set of articles focused on the cryosphere - icy environments that encompass snow, permafrost, ice-covered oceans, rivers and lakes, and of course the glaciers and the larger ice caps or ice sheets that they may drain. While glaciology can be rigidly defined as the study of glaciers, we adopt the inclusive view of the International Glaciological Society of glaciology involving the study of snow and ice in all forms.
“With more than 100 members, CryoExchange is well established as the national network of excellence in the study of the cryosphere.”
Scotland has a long-standing tradition of excellence in cryosphere research, which continues with CryoExchange, which was established in 2023 and is the 3rd forum of the Scottish Alliance for Geosciences, Environment and Society (SAGES) focused on Earth’s icy environments. Since its inception in 2007, SAGES has existed as an important partnership between academic and geoscience research institutions in Scotland. It supports and promotes the
nationally- and internationally-influential research of its members, serves as a critical network for geoscientists across Scotland, and provides knowledge-exchange and training opportunities for early-career researchers. You can find out more about the SAGES origin story via the RSGS Scottish Geographical Journal article co-authored by David Sugden and Anthony Fallick. With more than 100 members, CryoExchange is well established as the national network of excellence in the study of the cryosphere. The global reach of CryoExchange members’ research locations is illustrated in the accompanying infographic and in the following pages, we showcase the breadth and diversity of our members’ research and related interests. We hope they prove informative, inspiring, and thought-provoking.
We hope that glaciers and the cryosphere stay front of mind as we recognise the World Day of Glaciers annually on 21 March and move into the Decade of Action for Cryospheric Sciences (2025-2032), and we warmly invite you to keep updated with the work of SAGES (sages.ac.uk) and CryoExchange (cryo-exchange.com/).
Dr Lydia Sam and Dr Anshuman Bhardwaj, School of Geosciences, University of Aberdeen
Among the most compelling discoveries of planetary science in recent decades is the recognition that Mars, today a cold and arid desert world, preserves abundant evidence of ice-related landforms. Chief among these are Glacier-Like Forms (GLFs): lobate, tongue-shaped features that resemble terrestrial glaciers in morphology, as depicted in the figure, but are thought to consist of ice buried beneath a protective mantle of debris. Understanding how these features formed, evolved and persist is central to reconstructing Mars’ recent climate history and assessing the distribution of near-surface water ice on the planet. Renewed international interest in human exploration of Mars, coupled with advances in satellite observation and analogue research on Earth, means these enigmatic features can now be studied in unprecedented detail, elevating their importance for planetary science and exploration.
Planetary analogue studies, where terrestrial environments are used to interpret processes operating on other worlds, have become a cornerstone of this effort. By combining satellite observations of Mars with detailed studies of rock glaciers and debris-covered glaciers on Earth, scientists are gaining insight into how ice behaves under cold, dry and low-pressure conditions that differ markedly from those on our planet. The significance of this research extends well beyond geomorphological curiosity. GLFs are thought to be among the largest reservoirs of near-surface ice on Mars at mid-latitudes, implying that the planet experienced episodes of climate variability in the geologically recent past driven by orbital changes that altered temperature and snowfall patterns. Deciphering the origin and dynamics of GLFs therefore helps constrain models of Martian climate evolution and potential habitability, while also identifying possible resources for future robotic and human missions. Beyond planetary science, insights into Martian climate variability offer a valuable long-term perspective on how ice masses respond to external forcing over timescales far exceeding instrumental records. Mars preserves a clearer imprint of orbital-driven climate change, providing a natural laboratory for understanding how glaciers and ice-rich landforms grow, stabilise and decay under shifting boundary conditions, processes directly relevant to Earth’s own glacial history. For regions such as Scotland and the wider UK, where landscapes were profoundly shaped by past ice sheets, these comparative insights help refine interpretations of palaeoglaciation and long-term cryospheric sensitivity. In this way, studying ice on Mars can ultimately deepen our understanding of the processes governing glacier and icesheet change under Earth’s warming climate. However, interpreting Martian landforms presents a fundamental challenge: direct fieldwork is impossible. This is where Earth-based analogue studies become indispensable. On our planet, rock glaciers, mixtures of ice and debris creeping downslope under gravity, provide a powerful comparison. Found in regions such as the Alps, Himalaya, Andes and Arctic, rock glaciers share striking morphological and dynamical similarities with Martian GLFs. Both exhibit lobate fronts, surface ridges and furrows, and slow but persistent flow over long timescales.
Satellite datasets form the backbone of comparative studies between Earth and Mars. On Mars, instruments such as HiRISE and CTX aboard NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter allows researchers to map GLF morphology in exceptional
detail. Digital elevation models derived from stereo imagery reveal surface slopes, thickness estimates and flow-like structures.
Thermal data provide clues about subsurface ice content, while radar offers indirect evidence of internal layering and ice purity.
On Earth, an equally rich suite of satellite observations is available.
Optical imagery, thermal sensors and synthetic aperture radar data allow scientists to monitor rock glacier movement and surface temperature patterns. Increasingly, millimetrescale surface deformation measured through satellite interferometry has revealed that many rock glaciers remain actively flowing, even under marginal thermal conditions and field measurements, geophysical surveys and dating techniques that anchor satellite interpretations in physical reality.
The true power of planetary analogue research lies in the integration of these datasets. By analysing how rock glaciers respond to climate forcing, topography and debris cover on Earth, researchers can test hypotheses about the formation and evolution of GLFs on Mars. Studies of debris thickness and thermal insulation in terrestrial rock glaciers have informed models of how Martian ice could remain stable for millions of years beneath a thin debris mantle. Similarly, observations of flow patterns in terrestrial rock glaciers help constrain estimates of GLF rheology and ice content.
Such comparative work is inherently interdisciplinary, bringing together geomorphologists, glaciologists, planetary scientists, remote-sensing specialists and climate modellers. It bridges spatial and temporal scales, from metre-scale field observations on Earth to kilometre-scale landforms on Mars and climatic shifts spanning millions of years, and reflects a broader trend in geography: the dissolution of boundaries between planetary and terrestrial science in favour of a unified understanding of landscape evolution.
Ultimately, the study of Glacier-Like Forms on Mars through terrestrial analogues underscores a profound idea: planets do not exist in isolation. The frozen landscapes of Earth and Mars are linked by shared physical principles, even if expressed under different environmental conditions. By studying rock glaciers in Earth’s high mountains, we gain a window into the icy past of our planetary neighbour and deepen our understanding of cryosphere processes across the Solar System.
SAGES Cryosphere Exchange Team*
About 20 thousand years ago, Scotland was covered by a blanket of ice, in places over 1 km thick. Beneath this ice sheet, selective glacial erosion formed striking U-shaped valleys, lochs, and corries whilst preserving delicate rocky peaks (tors), resulting in the characteristic Scottish landscape we see today. Long after this ice sheet had gradually disappeared, semi-permanent snow and ice may have persisted in Scotland until as recently as the 1700s. During these more recent cold winters, the glacially-sculpted landscape shaped Scottish life and culture, inspiring the poetry of Robert Burns, the creation of the sport of curling and the founding of the world’s first figure skating club. The landscape continues to awe millions of Scots and visitors every year.
Because of this rich glacial heritage, Scotland is effectively an open-air laboratory for cryosphere science. By studying its landforms, scientists can reconstruct how glaciers behaved, how quickly ice melted, and how landscapes responded once the ice vanished – questions that are directly relevant to understanding today’s rapidly changing polar and alpine regions. Cryospheric change is reshaping climate patterns, ocean circulation, and geopolitical and economic activity. Scotland, although distant from the world’s major ice sheets, is directly affected by these processes through rising sea levels and extreme weather leading to coastal erosion and flooding.
Scotland to the Canadian High Arctic, the Antarctic Ice Sheet, to ice on other planets (see Sam and Bhardwaj), working with researchers around the world to include links to crosscutting themes, such as climate and ocean feedbacks and societal impacts.
Since SAGES was initiated, we have achieved great strides in improving inclusivity in and accessibility to the field. Building on this progress, our researchers strive to continue increasing inclusivity and accessibility in the field (see Wood), and we have found that a wider range of experiences and expertise brings innovation and originality. Along with international collaboration, a diverse community is also vital to understanding this change and its consequences for a global society.
Scotland has a long history of cryospheric research, from James Hutton’s pioneering work in geology in the 18th Century, to the 19th Century, when James Croll linked variations in Earth’s orbit to glacial-interglacial cycles. Early in the 20th Century, the Scottish National Antarctic Expedition (1902-1904), a pioneering oceanographic expedition led by William Speirs Bruce, established the first meteorological station in Antarctica and mapped unexplored regions of the icy continent. In the 21st Century, Scotland continues to punch far beyond its weight in this research. Two of the most influential textbooks in the field were co-authored in Scotland, by Doug Benn and David Sugden, and the reach of our community remains global (see CryoExchange infographic below). Our work spans the mountains and coasts of
Today, our work routinely utilises satellites with sensors that provide precise and extensive coverage of ice-covered land and ocean (see Picton). We have benefited from access to such satellite data, as well as specialised centres that process field samples (e.g. SUERC at the University of Glasgow) and high-performance computing facilities (e.g. the ARCHER2 supercomputer housed at the University of Edinburgh) which allow us to run model simulations to interrogate glaciological processes and predict future environments.
The modelling of past, present, and future cryospheric environments (see Strickland) and their interactions
with the ocean and climate system stands out as one of Scotland’s major scientific success stories over the SAGES era. This modelling, produced in Scotland, spans a wide range of topics and scales, from mountain glaciers and reconstructions of past glaciation in Scotland to presentday ice sheets and ice-ocean interactions. This research has been particularly prominent in understanding the processes at Greenland’s tidewater glaciers, including fjord circulation, melt and iceberg calving and is central to assessing ice-sheet behaviour and contributions to sea-level rise. In parallel, Scotland-based modelling of debris-covered glaciers, particularly in the Himalaya, has illuminated how surface debris alters melt processes with implications for future water resources for millions of people.
Scotland has also made significant contributions in research of the Antarctic Ice Sheet and the Southern Ocean. SAGES’ expertise in dating landscapes with cosmogenic isotopes has helped to reconstruct the deglaciation, and occasional readvance, of ice across West Antarctica over the past 20 thousand years. Recently, our scientists have contributed to high-profile international research projects, epitomised by the 2018-2025 International Thwaites Glacier Collaboration, that are providing new insights into how Antarctica will impact the wider planet through global sea-level rise and changes to marine ecology resulting from ice-sheet melting. Despite enormous progress, large uncertainties remain in the rate of sea-level rise contribution from Antarctica (see Miles), requiring progress in modelling and the datasets that inform it. Our work has trained an early-career workforce in Scotland with expertise across modelling, remote sensing, field science and geochronology that is optimally placed to deliver on this challenge.
Further research is now required to understand how glaciers and ice sheets lost ice in the past (see Kurop), are losing ice today, and are likely to respond to continued warming in the future, as well as the consequences of these changes for communities, ecosystems, and the global climate and ocean systems. In many high-mountain regions, glacier retreat threatens water supplies, while unstable glaciers and glacial lakes pose growing hazards to downstream communities (see MacManaway). This understanding is essential for managing natural resources, protecting biodiversity, and delivering effective nature-based solutions in a changing climate, and requires research that prioritises the knowledge and concerns of communities most affected by changing ice conditions (see Cook).
Continuing investment in this work is vital to inform and guide climate change mitigation broadly, and will save money on climate adaptation needs in the decades to come. Our work in regards to the ocean and climate systems is an integral piece of any mitigation and resilience efforts. We see the impact and success of our research community resulting from generations of cryosphere researchers being nurtured here over time. As such, alongside its research, SAGES remains committed to communicating findings to government, communities and industry and is keen to engage with Education Scotland and schools to ensure the biggest issues surrounding the cryosphere in our warming world are incorporated into mainstream education including the school curriculum
Scotland’s landscape, culture, and coastlines have been shaped by ice, and they remain influenced by cryospheric change today. We continue to play an outsized role in understanding these changes, with Scottish based researchers working across the globe to study ice and its impacts on climate and society. This issue of The Geographer brings together that CryoExchange community, highlighting, we hope, both the scientific importance of cryosphere research and its relevance for Scotland’s future in a rapidly changing world.
*Authors: Anna J. Crawford, Keir Nichols, Rachel Oien, Pete Nienow, Robert G. Bingham, Wenxin Zhang, Vahid Akbari, Ryan Strickland, Iain Wheel, William D. Harcourt, Hannah Picton, Jamie MacManaway, Brice R. Rea, TJ Young, Alison Cook, Lydia Sam, Anshuman Bhardwaj, Lokesh Jain, Emma F. Cameron, Beth Langley, Tom Cowton, Simon J. Cook, Clara J Nyqvist, Beatriz Recinos Rivas, Leam Howe.
Dr Ryan Strickland, School of Geography and Sustainable Development, University of St Andrews
Twenty-thousand years ago, Scotland lay under a vast sheet of ice. Glaciers stretched from the Highlands to the coast, grinding down mountains, gouging glens, and carving the lochs and corries that define the Scottish landscape. Almost every part of Scotland, whether you are walking through Glasgow or Glen Coe, was covered and shaped by slow, relentless rivers of ice. The coastline, too, looked very different. At that time, great ice sheets covered much of the Northern Hemisphere, and global sea levels were more than 100 meters lower than they are today.
Though the ice has long since retreated from Scotland, the forces that shaped its landscape remain at work elsewhere. In Greenland and Antarctica, massive ice sheets continue to flow and deform – and once again, melt driven by climate change will redraw coastlines around the world. Scotland’s glacial past is deeply etched into its terrain; its future, like that of many places, depends on answering two questions: how fast and how far will today’s ice sheets retreat? Climate, geography, and geology all play a role – but the key to answering this question is an essential scientific tool: the glacier model.
icebergs. Croll, a self-taught scientist working as a janitor at Andersonian University (now the University of Strathclyde), developed one of the earliest theories linking long-term climate change to variations in Earth’s orbit – a truly novel idea at the time – which we use today to understand one of the natural drivers of climate change.
Around the same time, scientists like Louis Agassiz and John Muir were exploring glaciers in the Alps and North America, arguing – correctly – that U-shaped valleys, striations in exposed bedrock, and over-deepened mountain lakes like those in Scotland were created by glacier activity. Lyell, despite his important contributions, never fully accepted the idea of continental-scale land ice in Scotland – a testament to the power paradigms have over our thinking, even when the evidence says otherwise.
“Almost every part of Scotland, whether you are walking through Glasgow or Glen Coe, was covered and shaped by slow, relentless rivers of ice.”
Scientific models are tools that help us describe and understand how natural processes work. They come in many forms – some are conceptual, some rely on statistics, and others are rooted in the fundamental laws of physics. Glacier models draw on all three. From observations, we know that ice flows downhill and that climate influences how much ice accumulates or melts over time. Statistically, satellite data allows us to measure with high confidence that most glaciers on Earth are shrinking – many at rates unprecedented in recorded history. Physics-based glacier models go a step further, applying principles like the conservation of mass and energy to forecast how ice will behave in the future or simulate how it may have behaved in the past.
The study of glaciers began with careful observation. In the 19th century, Scottish geologists Charles Lyell and James Croll were among the first to recognize the vast influence of ice on the Scottish landscape. Lyell, while at Kings College London, mapped erratic boulders and “superficial” sediment (glacial till) near Kirriemuir (Angus), attributing them to material deposited on the sea floor by glaciers and
Although these early glaciologists lacked the tools to model glacier motion, their detailed observations and insights laid the foundations for future glaciologists. They asked the big questions – where did the ice come from, how far did it go, and why did it change?
These are the fundamental questions that drive glacier modelling today.
At its core, a glacier model needs to do a few basic things: track how ice moves, how much snow accumulates or melts, and how ice interacts with the landscape beneath it. In the 1950s, British physicists John W. Glen, at the University of Birmingham, and John Nye, at the University of Bristol, were the first to successfully apply physics to the study of glacier and ice sheet mechanics. In a series of pioneering laboratory experiments, Glen showed how stress – the force applied to ice – relates to strain – how much the ice deforms. Nye took this a step further by applying the mathematics of fluid flow to glacier ice, making it possible to predict how ice moves. The equations behind this are now known as the Glen-Nye Flow Law. Together, Glen and Nye helped transform glaciology from a largely descriptive science into a physically and mathematically rigorous science.
The Glen-Nye Flow Law underpins every physics-based glacier model. With a few basic assumptions – like a flat bed and constant climate – a glaciologist can solve for the thickness and speed of a glacier using nothing but a pencil, paper, and
a bit of calculus. But real glaciers do not flow over perfectly flat beds, and their environments are anything but constant. To model how ice moves in the real world – over rugged bedrock, beneath snowfall and melt, and through a changing climate – glaciologists rely on computers to do the heavy lifting.
Except for a handful of very simple scenarios, the equations that describe how ice moves cannot be solved exactly. To get around this, glaciologists rely on algorithms developed by mathematicians to approximate solutions to these equations. These methods are so effective that, for most purposes, they are indistinguishable from the real solution. But accuracy comes at a cost: the more precise you want the solution to be, the more calculations the computer must perform. For large glaciers and ice sheets, that can mean solving millions of equations at once. That is why cutting-edge glacier models must run on supercomputers powerful enough to handle the enormous computational workload.
One of the most urgent reasons we model glaciers is to predict sea level rise. Globally, nearly one billion people live within 5 km of the ocean; in Scotland, more than one million residents – 20% of the population – live within just 1 km of the coast. As sea levels rise, many coastal cities will face the difficult task of relocating infrastructure and people –decisions that must be made within the next hundred years. The question is: how quickly must we prepare? Today, the largest uncertainties in future sea level projections stem from how quickly the massive ice sheets in Greenland and Antarctica will lose ice. Glacier models help estimate this by simulating how ice flows, melts, and breaks apart en-route to the sea.
Although current models produce reliable projections, some of the most critical parts of this system – what’s happening beneath the ice and how glaciers interact with the ocean –remain difficult to observe and hard to predict. Conditions at the bases of ice sheets, beneath kilometers of ice, control how easily glaciers slide. Pressures are immense and the bed is almost entirely unobservable, forcing glaciologists to rely on theory to simulate sliding. As in Glen’s time, laboratory experiments are the only way to directly observe ice deformation and sliding under realistic, albeit synthetic, conditions. Calving – the dramatic process by which icebergs break off at the glacier’s end – appears chaotic, is influenced by both ice and ocean conditions, and is notoriously hard to
model. However, these uncertainties show glaciologists where to focus, and as observations improve, so do the models. To help tackle these uncertainties, glaciologists are increasingly turning to tools from artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning. These methods excel at detecting patterns in large, complex datasets – something glacier science has in abundance, thanks to decades of satellite imagery, radar surveys, and climate records. Machine learning algorithms can be trained to infer bed conditions, track calving fronts, and emulate the behavior of fullscale physics-based models. For now, these techniques complement – but do not replace – traditional, physics-based approaches. AI and machine learning are used to fill in data gaps and speed up simulations to help researchers explore thousands of possible futures in a changing climate. As these technologies continue to develop, they may become integral to the quest to understand and predict the future of Earth’s ice.
Scotland’s landscape is a monument to the power of ice. From the glens of the Highlands to scattered erratics on lowland fields, traces of ancient glaciers are etched across the country. Today, the ice has shifted to the poles, but its global legacy is far from over. As ice sheets in Greenland and Antarctica continue to melt, they will raise sea levels along Scotland’s coast and around the globe. Predicting how this will happen is one of the defining challenges of our time. Glacier models – shaped by more than two centuries of observation, breakthroughs in physics and computing power, and now, the rise of artificial intelligence – are our best tools for looking forward.
“Glacier models – shaped by more than two centuries of observation, breakthroughs in physics and computing power, and now, the rise of artificial intelligence – are our best tools for looking forward.”
Dr Marion Messmer, Director, International Security Programme, Chatham House
Since the US attack on Venezuela and capture of Nicolás Maduro, various US government officials, influencers close to the MAGA movement and President Donald Trump himself have reiterated threats against Greenland Their claims, that the US needs to control Greenland for its own national security, have caused even greater alarm in Denmark than when they were first made earlier in 2025 – Greenland is an autonomous territory of Denmark. President Trump claims that the US ‘needs’ Greenland because of its strategic location in the Arctic. It is true to say that both Russia and China have increased their military activities in the Arctic in recent years. And, if Russia launched missiles at the US, they would likely fly over Greenland. That could make the territory a useful staging ground for a greater US presence and a strategic location to place US missile interceptors, as part of the ‘Golden Dome’ missile defence system – a priority for the Trump administration. However, what is not clear is why Washington needs full control over Greenland to defend itself. The US already has a presence there at Pituffik Space Base, a US Space Force installation that has been in operation since 1943.
A 1951 US–Denmark defence agreement allows the US to continue to use the base, which hosts the 12th Space Warning Squadron, a team operating US ballistic missile early warning systems, as well as a team looking after part of the US’s global satellite network. The base has an active airfield and the northernmost deep-water port, making it a useful infrastructure hub.
During the Cold War, the US stationed up to 6,000 troops across a range of camps across the island. It could presumably surge troop presence again if it felt it needed a greater presence in the region – without disputing Danish sovereignty. Denmark has made clear that US threats are unacceptable. Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen issued a statement on Monday reminding the Trump administration that the US and Denmark are NATO allies and that the US already had access to Greenland through an existing defence agreement. She also said that an attack on Greenland would end NATO This is not an exaggeration. It is hard to see how the alliance would recover from a treaty breach as shocking as one ally attacking another to seize territory.
Changes to US policy under President Trump already risk undermining the credibility of the US commitment to NATO’s Article 5 guarantee. The US (NATO’s most powerful country by far) threatening to attack a NATO member state further damages Article 5’s credibility.
A US posture of allowing US interests to override international law is a normative challenge for NATO, too. NATO has described itself as an alliance based on its members’ common values around democracy and the rule of law, among others. Indeed, this is the basis of much of NATO’s criticism of Russian actions against Ukraine and other states. A US deviation from these values undermines NATO politically as well as militarily.
European leaders need to think carefully about their caution in criticizing the Trump administration over its actions in Venezuela. France has used relatively strong language to condemn the US attacks as unlawful. Others like the UK have been much more careful.
It seems unambiguous to say that the attack was illegal –even if one has questions about the circumstances under which President Maduro came to power. But given the complaints about Western hypocrisy made during the Israel–Gaza war, countries would do well to speak out more clearly: any hedging is unlikely to serve them in the long run.
Traditional alliance systems are reshaping daily, and European states might find they need support from other South American or other Global South states in the future.
European leaders will remain concerned about Europe’s ability to defend itself with a more unpredictable and even hostile US. The threat from Russia remains real.
However, no state should be under any illusion that it will be possible to return to a reliance on US security guarantees.
A phased US drawdown in Europe remains preferable to a rushed retreat. But European countries ought not to be overconfident in their ability to influence US decision making on these issues. They therefore ought to condemn US action in Venezuela clearly, and issue statements of support for Denmark and Greenland (UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer has already said that Greenland’s future should be settled by Denmark and Greenland).
Bottom of FormIn parallel, European countries need to think seriously about what NATO without the US would look like, and accelerate investments in those capabilities where the US remains strongest, such as command and control networks, enemy air defence suppression and similar enabling capabilities.
They will now also need to seriously consider what kind of an adversary the US might be, especially in the event that it attacks Greenland. Much of this should and will be done quietly or privately. But states can no longer afford to ignore this possibility.
Despite the concerns about their capabilities, European states have significant leverage that the current US administration seems keen to overlook. US military personnel and equipment stationed in Europe are not only there to strengthen NATO deterrence. European bases are also very convenient to support US operations. Removing them would make some operations in the Middle East and High North much harder.
If the US continues threatening NATO member-states, European countries could make things more difficult for the US. They could refuse to refuel US ships in European ports; refuse to accept injured military personnel for treatment in European military hospitals; and require high payments for the continued stationing of US troops. They could also propose closing certain military installations.
These are previously unthinkable measures. But they might reinforce to the US that while it has become popular to complain about European security freeloaders, this has been a mutually beneficial arrangement for a long time.
This article was originally published by Chatham House: www.chathamhouse.org/2026/01/us-intentions-towardsgreenland-threaten-natos-future-european-countries-are-nothelpless
“US threats to annex Greenland following the attack on Venezuela should be taken seriously. European countries have important leverage they should be prepared to use.”
Dr William Harcourt, School of Geosciences, University of Aberdeen
Glaciers are flowing rivers of ice that move downhill at a rate proportional to the amount of ice that builds up at higher elevations. As snow accumulates and densifies, ice forms and moves downhill due to gravity and under the force of its own weight. As a glacier reaches lower elevations, where it is warmer, it melts.
This process of ice mass accumulation and then removal through melting (and iceberg calving) ensures that a glacier maintains equilibrium. However, there are some glaciers that do not follow this pattern and instead accumulate ice over several years before releasing it suddenly and rapidly in an event called a ‘surge’ (Figure 1). Surge-type glaciers accumulate and then release ice in a cyclical manner, with the accumulation of mass (quiescent phase) typically lasting several years or even decades, whilst the release of ice (active phase) may last just months or weeks.
The existence of both ‘surge-type’ and ‘normal’ glaciers raises a pertinent question: why do some glaciers surge and others do not? Around 1% of glaciers worldwide are known to have surged and are found in geographical clusters determined by climate. For example, there is an ‘Arctic Ring’ of surge-type glaciers that extends from Alaska-Yukon, through Greenland and Svalbard, and then into the Russian Arctic. The very fact that they are found in clusters suggests surges in different locations may be driven by the same physical processes. The cyclicity of glacier surges is generally explained by changes in the availability of energy at the bed i.e. how much water is available for a glacier to slide. As ice accumulates during the quiescent-phase, meltwater will begin to form at the glacier bed due to pressure melting and a thermal transition of ice from cold-based (ice that is frozen to the bed) to warm-based (ice near the bed overlying meltwater). This leads to sliding and glacier acceleration. During a surge, the glacier spreads out and the effects of pressure melting reduces, hence the glacier slows down again (and the glacier transitions from warm-based to cold-based). This cycle of fast and slow flow continues and is driven by the availability of meltwater at the bed.
Meltwater is widely available at the base of most glaciers and ice sheets, so why do some glaciers enter a surge cycle? Some evidence suggests that long glaciers with shallow
surface slopes provide the ideal conditions required for mass to build-up over time and then be released during a surge. Furthermore, the presence of sediment rather than hard bedrock at the base of glaciers provides a deformable layer that promotes glacier sliding. The relative importance of these factors will vary, giving rise to a diverse range of glacier surge behaviour that is leading us to rethink the idea that glaciers can be classified as either surge-type or not. Instead, surge theory may be able to explain the wider spectrum of cyclical glacier behaviours, potentially changing the way in which we understand the fundamental physics through which glaciers flow.
“This process of ice mass accumulation and then removal through melting (and iceberg calving) ensures that a glacier maintains equilibrium.”
If glacier surges represent the underpinning theory for glacier dynamics, could an ice sheet ‘surge’? Outlet glaciers from smaller ice caps have been observed to surge and therefore such events are not restricted to glaciers confined by topography. Furthermore, fast-flowing corridors of ice within ice sheets known as ‘ice streams’ also display oscillatory behaviour between fast and slow flow. For example, thickening of the Kamb Ice Stream in Antarctica is analagous to the mass accumulation of a quiescent-phase surgetype glacier. However, this was driven by the removal of subglacial water to a neighbouring ice stream.
Furthermore, ice streams oscillate over much longer timescales (e.g. hundreds of years). There is also evidence that smaller outlet glaciers from the Greenland Ice Sheet have surged, raising the possibility that ice sheets, or at least sections of them, can surge. Therefore, given the right environmental conditions, it is possible that all glaciers may display surge-like behaviour simply at different spatial and temporal scales.
To test this hypothesis, we need to better understand the role of subglacial conditions in controlling ice flow variability, a grand challenge in glaciology.
Jamie Macmanaway, University of the Highlands and Islands
Climate change is driving the rapid retreat and loss of glaciers and ice sheets around the world. This recession is associated with a wide range of challenges. Notably, as the ice retreats, meltwater eventually ends up in the ocean, and raises sea levels. Around 25,000 years ago, when an ice sheet covered the whole of Scotland, sea-levels were about 120 metres lower than they are today. Ireland and the Outer Hebrides were connected to the UK mainland, and you could have walked from Edinburgh to Copenhagen without getting your feet wet (barring the occasional river). Future projections depend on how quickly we transition away from burning fossil fuels, but we are likely to see a metre of sea-level rise by 2100, with levels continuing to rise for centuries after that. Other impacts are both more local and more immediate in nature. On the 28th of May, 2025, the Birch Glacier in Switzerland collapsed, causing a massive landslide which buried the village of Blatten under millions of tons of rock and ice. Fortunately, this event was predicted in the preceding days, and the village was safely evacuated. Nevertheless, one person died and the total cost of the disaster was estimated at 320 million Swiss Francs (nearly £300 million). This catastrophic collapse was caused by rock falling from a nearby mountain peak onto the surface of the glacier. Such rockfalls are increasingly common in mountainous areas as temperatures continue to rise. One reason for this is the warming of permafrost – ground which stays frozen all year round. While the permafrost remains frozen, it can act like a sort of glue – holding slopes together. As it warms, slopes can become unstable and fail – resulting in rockfalls and landslides.
This is not the only cause of landslides in deglaciating environments, however. Such events can also be triggered directly by the retreat of glaciers. Glacial erosion results in landscapes characterised by steep-sided, ‘U-shaped’, valleys. The ice in these valleys acts to support (or ‘buttress’) the valley walls. As the ice melts, this support is removed, which can lead to the collapse of the over-steepened valley sides. There is evidence of numerous giant landslides associated with such ‘glacial debuttressing’ during the last period of widespread glacier retreat (around 10,000 years ago). One such example from Southern Greenland saw debris (including boulders 45 metres in diameter) transported up to sixteen kilometres from the source area. Where landslides impact water, displacement waves can result. On the 10th of August, 2025, a tsunami nearly 500 metres high was generated by a landslide in Tracy Arm, Alaska. Fortunately, there were no fatalities, but a large area of forest along the length of the fjord was completely destroyed.
Displacement waves can also be generated when landslides or rockfalls impact glacial lakes (which are increasingly common in deglaciating regions). If these waves are sufficiently large, they can result in an outburst flood, whereby the lake may drain partially or completely. Glacial lake outburst floods (or GLOFs) can have devastating impacts on communities and infrastructure downstream. A GLOF in June 2013 killed 5000 people in India. This disaster wasn’t actually caused by a displacement wave, but by heavy rainfall and snowmelt entering the lake. Heavy rainfall was also responsible for a more recent tragedy. On the 5th of August, 2025, a debris flow devastated the Indian village of Dharali, claiming more than 60 lives. Debris flows occur when flood waters pick up
and transport large quantities of sediment (which can include boulders up to tens of metres in diameter). In recently deglaciated areas, such sediment is readily available, having been deposited by the retreating ice.
Glacier collapses, landslides, outburst floods, and debris flows may become more common as deglaciation continues around the world. Humans are increasingly moving into areas formerly occupied by ice, increasing the risks associated with such hazards. The case of Blatten illustrates how effective monitoring, early warning systems, and community preparedness can help to mitigate the worst impacts of some of these events. However, these measures require longterm investment and infrastructure, which many countries, particularly in the Global South, are unable to deploy.
Tragically, the communities that have done the least to contribute to the problem are often those who face the most severe consequences of a warming world.
Holly McNair, Communications Officer, RSGS
How did you go from a deep-sea diver to a polar explorer?
I never really knew what I wanted to be, or what kind of occupation I wanted to have when I was a kid, so I kind of just followed my passions. When I grew up, I was interested in two things : spending nights in tents and on skis and the other was diving. I was diving before I could swim. When I was 20, I started working as a diver. I did that professionally for 12 years… It was actually on the North Sea, on the British sector, on the Frigg field, that I was planning my first expedition, because I met two other divers. We planned a trip across Greenland, and that took me to my next profession. After I did my first solo trip to the North Pole, I felt that I could maybe make a living out of it and go full-time. So for me, I’ve just followed my passions and the opportunities that came my way and I took those opportunities and made them happen. I think if you want to be really good at something, you have to do what you like to do. That’s how you can stretch further than anyone else... I wanted to see how far I could take it, and how far it was possible to push my body – as an athlete, but also driven by passion – doing something you really burn for and want to do more of.
and you feel when he writes that it’s a lot about being patient, and having stamina, and resilience. You also can read that through diaries of Robert Scott, where giving up isn’t an option and there’s a greater purpose behind it, which has been a great inspiration for me.
I’m also inspired by modern explorers like Reinhold Messner, Ranulph Fiennes, David Hempleman-Adams, and others who have carried that British tradition further.
The role of modern exploration?
“I think we all stand on the shoulders of others who have done something before us.”
Back in the days of Nansen and Scott, exploration was about filling white spots on the map. Today, I think our biggest mission is to inspire people to be in contact with nature, to spend nights in the great outdoors. That’s one of the most valuable things you can do, and something you can pass on to your children.
Do I save the world by talking about melting ice? – Probably not, but do I inspire others to challenge themselves and go on adventures? I hope so, and I think that’s the most valuable thing I bring to the table. And maybe it is naïve, but I do believe that that if you use something, you’re in a better position to take care of it.
I think my hardest challenge, at least mentally, was my first solo expedition in 1994. Back then, just believing it was possible to go solo and totally unsupported all the way to the North Pole was kind of unheard of… I hadn’t even spent one night alone in a tent when I started that expedition, so I think that’s the biggest mental leap I’ve ever taken. I don’t think I’ve ever been closer to giving up than I was during the first week of that trip. That was my most personal expedition, and I think my greatest achievement as well.
Physically, the hardest trip was probably the crossing of the Arctic Ocean that I did in 2019 with Mike Horn from South Africa. We crossed the North Pole in the dark, sailing out from Nome in August, jumped onto the ice in September, and skied into the darkness toward the North Pole, continuing across it without any hope of rescue. We finished north of Svalbard in December. After 87 days, two days more than we had food for. When we reached the boat, I had one pack lunch left, and I don’t think I would have survived another week on that trip. So that’s probably the hardest physical expedition I’ve done. Who inspired you?
I think we all stand on the shoulders of others who have done something before us. I’ve been very inspired by the great explorers from the golden age of polar exploration, like Amundsen, Scott, Shackleton, and Nansen. Even though I sometimes wish they had written a little bit more personally from those days. Nansen actually did write quite personally,
The ICE Legacy Project
When I first started expeditions, nobody talked about climate change. But in 2007 when I followed in the footsteps of Fridtjof Nansen then there was a huge change. We crossed the Arctic Ocean, and I really experienced how the ice had changed compared to when I did the first expedition in the early 90’s.
The ice was 1-2 metre compared to 3-4 metres, and the coverage had been reduced almost 30%. So, seeing that I put together an expedition to sail around the Arctic. We did that in four months, and that is a trip that would have taken six years to do just a few decades ago. So after experiencing these things first hand, I created the ICE Legacy Project with Vincent Colliard – To cross the 20 largest ice fields on the planet.
We want to show how important snow and ice are for sustaining life. Science is important to make good decisions, but you also need adventure, someone to go out there and come back with stories, because seeing is believing.
You shouldn’t underestimate the power of the public. Somehow, you need to interact with the normal person on the street when you talk about climate change – someone who doesn’t even read scientific reports. So, bringing back stories and emotions from these frozen landscapes is what we can bring to the table.
The problem with climate change is that it’s so huge, so overwhelming, and it’s easy to think that what little you do doesn’t matter. I like to turn that around and take it down to a personal level. If you’re part of the problem, you also have to be part of the solution. If everyone does something, it adds up, and then it matters. Every little step counts.
If you think about history, all big changes have happened because enough people believed in the same thing and believed it was possible. And in the end, that’s also what politicians will listen to.
Last year we crossed Ellesmere Island with four ice fields, we were away for 3 months and did 1,000km. So far we have 16 of the largest ice fields and the goal is 20. Two of them are in Russian in Military sensitive areas so we will see how that goes as it’s not currently possible to go there. One is in the Canadian Arctic and one in the Himalayas. So really no time frame to complete it we just need to see how it goes.
I think what struck me is how fast it goes. When the temperature goes from from minus one to plus one, everything melts. For me it is a feeling of urgency and people need to know these things. These areas are the fridges of the world, it keeps it fresh and healthy, and when you pull that plug, we lose these cold areas of the world, and you release very destructive powers. I think it is the biggest challenge that humanity has been faced with so far.
Climate change is a personal issue, and every small action or step matters. It’s also about being aware of what is going on, because then you take part in the solution.
When it comes to adventure, I would say, don’t save your energy. Don’t think that summer is something happening in the future – it’s happening now. Soon it’s going to be autumn, and you have to follow your dream and use your energy now. When you get older, it’s not the days you spend lying on the couch at home that you will remember. It’s the days you were hungry, cold, and unsure how things would end. That is what you’ll remember. Don’t be afraid of adventure or challenge. Life is full of challenges, so we might as well start to enjoy it.
I’m a big fan of maps. When I think about geography, I think about how the world looks, places I dream of going. Someone makes the maps, and others go out and tell the world what it looks like. I want to be the one who goes out and fills those maps with stories.
“Don’t be afraid of adventure or challenge. Life is full of challenges, so we might as well start to enjoy it.”
Dr Bertie Miles, School of Geosciences, University of Edinburgh
Global sea levels are projected to rise by close to one metre above pre-industrial levels by the end of this century. This increase reflects the combined effects of the thermal expansion of the oceans, melting mountain glaciers, and ice loss from the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets. The consequences should not be underestimated: homes are already being lost and low-lying islands evacuated. Yet, for the most part, humanity can adapt to one metre of sea-level rise. But what if sea levels rise by ten metres by the year 2300 or 2400? We can build sea walls for one metre, maybe even three, but we cannot build them for ten metres, the equivalent of a three-storey building. Such a rise in sea level would redraw the world’s coastlines, trigger mass inland migration, and cause extraordinary economic loss; it would be a global catastrophe. This is the scale of change that widespread melting of the Antarctic Ice Sheet could unleash. The good news is that this remains a worstcase scenario and is avoidable.
sustaining retreat. There is some evidence that this process is already underway in West Antarctica. Thwaites Glacier, located in West Antarctica, is one of the most rapidly changing glaciers in the world. Thwaites is 100 kilometres wide and drains a vast marine basin that contains three metres of sea-level equivalent ice. Over the past 50 years, Thwaites has lost its floating ice shelf, has accelerated, and has begun retreating into its deep embayment. A consensus among the glaciological community is that globally significant sea-level contributions from this glacier are inevitable, irrespective of climate action over the coming decades to centuries.
“A consensus among the glaciological community is that globally significant sea-level contributions from this glacier are inevitable, irrespective of climate action over the coming decades to centuries.”
The Antarctic Ice Sheet contains about sixty metres of sea-level equivalent of ice. Currently, the ice sheet is fringed by floating extensions of glaciers known as ice shelves, that act like dams, gripping high points on the sea floor and limiting the flow of ice into the ocean. Because these ice shelves are floating, they are highly sensitive to changes in both ocean and air temperatures. Over recent decades, a small number of ice shelves have already deteriorated or completely collapsed in response to climate change. The most famous example is the collapse of the Larsen B Ice Shelf in 2002. In the weeks following this collapse, the glaciers that fed the ice shelf accelerated seven-fold, meaning that seven times more ice was discharged into the ocean. This is one example of the many non-linear processes in the Antarctic system that make it the wildcard of sea-level rise. Another instance of non-linear instability involves the subglacial topography of Antarctica. Millions of years of erosion, paired with the immense weight of ice up to four kilometres thick, have carved the bedrock into deep marine basins. This creates a “soup bowl” geometry where the bedrock deepens below sea level as one moves further inland. This configuration can create a positive feedback loop whereby an initial retreat of the ice brings thicker ice into contact with the ocean, causing more melting and further self-
More positively, the three other major marine basins in East Antarctica (containing nineteen metres of sea-level equivalent ice) are currently showing much more limited change. With reasonable and sustained reductions in greenhouse gas emissions, our best estimate is that these basins will probably not make similar contributions to sea-level rise. However, under unabated greenhouse gas emissions, catastrophic sea-level rise, approaching the tenmetre figure by 2300 or 2400, cannot be ruled out. It would be irresponsible not to acknowledge the substantial remaining uncertainties. While there is consensus that West Antarctica will make significant contributions to sea-level rise, there is no consensus on the rate at which this will occur. In East Antarctica, the use of terms such as “probably” and “cannot be ruled out” when describing the stability of marine basins is deliberate and signals our lack of certainty. A major challenge facing Antarctic science is that current research funding does not match the scale of the problem. Perhaps the nearest analogy of the technical challenges of gathering field data in Antarctica is that of space exploration. Yet, the largest targeted research programme in Antarctic history is the International Thwaites Collaboration, which had a total budget of around £40 million over seven years. This is orders of magnitude smaller than some of the funding used to tackle other globally important scientific issues. If we want definitive answers to these global threats, we must fund the science at the scale it demands.
Dr Alison Cook FRSGS, Scottish Association for Marine Science
The Canadian Arctic is experiencing region-wide ice melt on both land and sea and there is growing evidence of the knock-on impacts that this is having on both the environment and the people who live there. One significant effect of sea ice reduction is an increase in shipping activity taking place, whereby ships are entering regions once covered year-round by sea ice, and in other regions transiting for longer periods of the year as the shipping season lengthens. The greatest increases have been along major maritime trade routes, including Hudson Strait (Arctic Bridge), along western Baffin Bay from Davis Strait to the north of Baffin Island, and the southern route of the Northwest Passage. The increase has largely been driven by socioeconomic changes, such as natural resource development, increased tourism and trans-Arctic trade aspirations, all enabled by declining sea ice.
The environmental impacts of this increase in shipping include: underwater noise pollution and strikes being a deterrent to marine mammals; water and atmospheric pollution such as ballast water release, fuel consumption or oil spills having negative effects on marine life, and the introduction of invasive species with the influx of vessels from further abroad. Each of these effects cascade to risks to the coastal Inuit communities located throughout the region who depend on wildlife and the environment for their livelihoods, food and culture. One recent study I did showed the number and type of vessels that visited or transited close to 43 Inuit communities over the past 10 years, and our findings can be used as a baseline for monitoring future changes in shipping, and the associated risks to individual communities.
One region of note is the Northwest Passage. It has attracted interest for centuries, in particular since the illfated expedition of Sir John Franklin and his teams on the ships HMS Erebus and Terror in the 1840s. More recently, the shipping industry has had a keen eye on these waters because of their potential to offer an economically viable route between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. This is of concern to Inuit communities in the region. I heard first hand from those who live in Resolute, a community with a population of 183 (2021 census) situated on Cornwallis Island, at the eastern end of the Northwest Passage (NWP).
During a visit I had there in 2019, Inuit community members drew on maps the locations of wildlife and areas of cultural significance close to where they live. They have seen an increase in ships in recent years, and that as a result experience impacts on the environment that is central to their livelihood and culture. Species that they harvest for consumption, sharing and subsistence, including walrus and whales, have been driven away from locations they used to frequent. They have encountered cracks in the sea ice produced by ships transiting earlier in the year, which have disrupted their over-ice hunting routes. They shared stories with us, including that some ships dump their ballast water or waste in the ocean not far away from their community. This is happening now, and working alongside Inuit from the region offered insights that quantitative shipping data did not show. One perhaps surprising, and more positive, discovery from another recent project I was involved in is that the prospect of the northern NWP becoming a viable regular shipping route, free of hazardous sea ice, is unlikely any time soon. This is because it’s in the marine region south of the extensive thicker and older multi-year ice in the Arctic Ocean, and as the multiyear ice breaks up, it moves into the channel that now has less of the thinner (first-year) ice that was previously present each year. This creates sea ice ‘choke points’ in the NWP that remain in place throughout the year and make it inaccessible or hazardous to ships. The ice choke point area coverage varies year to year, and there are some years that the region is clear of sea ice, but the occurrence of choke points is likely to be frequent for many years to come. Across the region as a whole, changes in sea ice, the impact that this has on shipping, followed by the consequences to the environment and then communities must be monitored and policies put in place for governance at a local and regional scale. Inclusion of community members is essential to ensure that suitable governance approaches are developed to reduce the identified shipping risks for the future before the shipping rates increase further.
“There is growing evidence of the knock-on impacts that ice melt is having on both the environment and the people who live there.”
Dr TJ Young, Dr Ryan Strickland and Anusha Goswami, School of Geography and Sustainable Development, University of St Andrews
Beneath many Antarctic ice streams lie deep, watersaturated sedimentary basins: subglacial aquifers that potentially store large amounts of water. In a year’s time – if all goes well –several members of our project team will be on a 2-month-long geophysics tractor traverse across the Institute Ice Stream, the largest of the glaciers feeding the vast Ronne Ice Shelf, with the goal to image the subglacial environment and groundwater reservoir beneath the ice. These aquifers are thought to be extensive and dynamic, directly interacting with the overlying ice to directly influence how fast ice flows from land to ocean, influencing the speed of sea level rise.
But, why does all of this matter?
The answer lies in the recent – and not so recent – history of the Weddell Sea Sector of West Antarctica, which contains 20% of the continent’s ice and is one of its most dynamic regions. Analysis of geological samples taken from this region suggest that parts of this section of the ice sheet were previously much thinner and smaller than today, providing important evidence for major ice sheet reconfiguration over the past several thousand years. Because past deformation accumulates and is preserved in the ice’s internal structure and layers, relics of such past reorganisations have also been detected with radar surveys. Collectively, these findings demonstrate that West Antarctic flow patterns have changed rapidly in response to modest environmental forcing – and potentially can do so again.
An increasing amount of evidence suggests that these groundwater reservoirs are not passive. Observations and modelling demonstrate that as the ice above thins, groundwater can experience exfiltration, where, due to the overlying weight becoming progressively lighter it is pushed upward toward the ice base. In the fastest thinning regions of West Antarctica, this exfiltration may reach tens to hundreds of millimetres per year – enough to double the total water available at the bed. The presence of increased amounts of water between the ice sheet and its underlying bed lubricates this interface, enabling glaciers and ice streams to accelerate in speed.
In places where seawater once intruded beneath the ice, geophysical surveys over the Ross Sea sector of the Antarctic Ice Sheet detected pockets of ancient brine – highly concentrated seawater – remain trapped within the sediment underlying the ice sheet. These brines, as further evidence of earlier collapse and regrowth episodes, influence groundwater density, the temperature at which water freezes, and flow pathways. In this regard, the presence, movement, and salinity of groundwater underneath the ice sheet is highly dynamic and may have influenced not only the past and present-day behaviour of ice flow regime, but also the propensity of future reorganisation of the ice sheet.
West Antarctica’s history is one of retreat, thinning, reorganisation, and readvance – collectively shaped through climatic, oceanic, glaciological, and groundwater processes. Today, the West Antarctic Ice Sheet is changing rapidly, with satellite observations showing progressive thinning of ice across the Weddell Sea sector. If this thinning continues – as current trends suggest – groundwater will likely play an increasingly central role in influencing ice flow. Upward groundwater fluxes will do more than increasing bed lubrication: they can reshape subglacial channels, alter sediment transport, and deliver nutrient rich water into the ocean cavity beneath ice shelves. These changes have cascading effects on melt rates, ocean circulation beneath ice shelves, and the buttressing strength that slows inland ice. Importantly, while analysis of satellite imagery has transformed our view of Antarctica, they are only able to observe the ice sheet surface, and only direct geophysical field measurements are able to access and image the subsurface environment. During the traverse, we will use phase sensitive radars to reconstruct internal ice fabric and multiple seismic instruments, including a vibroseis “thumper” truck, to penetrate beyond the ice and image the deeper groundwater aquifer. By mapping the groundwater beneath one of the largest contributors to the Ronne Ice Shelf, we aim to improve our understanding of both modern ice dynamics and the processes that shaped the Weddell Sea sector throughout the Holocene and earlier.
“West Antarctic flow patterns have changed rapidly in response to modest environmental forcing.”
Dr Beatriz Recinos Rivas, Dr Teresa Armijos Burneo and William Latriche, PhD Student, School of Geosciences, University of Edinburgh and Eilidh Campbell, PhD Student, School of Geosciences, University of Aberdeen
In the high mountains of the tropical Andes, glaciers act as climate regulators, natural water reservoirs, that help sustain fragile ecosystems and underpin local lifeways. As they shrink and lose ice volume (Fig 1a), their ability to buffer droughts weakens – threatening access to water for irrigation, drinking and hydropower. Changes in melt patterns can also affect the timing and quality of streamflow, disrupting ecosystems, including flora and fauna displacement, and agricultural practices.
“As the ice disappears, so do the rituals, memories, and relationships that connect people to the peaks.”
At first glance at the Chimborazo Glacier Complex in Ecuador, exported runoff increases under higher emissions scenarios (e.g. SSP5-8.5) compared to lower ones (Fig 1b). But this does not signal greater water security . It represents a glacier “spending” its store of ice more quickly – and once the ice is gone, so is the water supply. The consequences of this are more pronounced in the arid southern Andes, but Northern Ecuador has already seen water disputes caused by inadequate infrastructure and is therefore particularly vulnerable to further impacts following glacier loss.
But the story of these tropical glaciers is not just a hydrological and environmental one – it is also deeply human. People who inhabit the Andean highlands have long depended on these glaciers for water, livelihoods and importantly, to sustain their cultural practices.
Glaciers are tied to cultural identity, local histories, legends, rituals and spiritual practices. The story of Baltazar Ushca –known as El Último Hielero gives a powerful reminder of this connection. For more than 60 years, Ushca climbed Mount Chimborazo to carve and then carry blocks of ice back down to sell in the town, continuing a long family tradition. “The natural ice from Chimborazo is better than the ice from your fridge; that ice is the best – sweet and good for your bones”, he says in the 2012 documentary El Último Hielero. His work was not just practical; it was spiritual, rooted in respect for the mountain he called Padre Chimborazo. Many indigenous communities consider glaciers sacred – tied to origin stories, ceremonies, and seasonal calendars. As the ice disappears, so do the rituals, memories, and relationships that connect people to the peaks. Ushca’s solitary climbs
became longer each year as the glacier receded, a living testament to the slow erasure of both ice and identity.
Tropical glaciers in the Andes like Chimborazo are losing mass at an accelerated rate that appears to outpace global glacier model predictions. Glaciologists can adjust numerical models to align with observed long-term losses, but these tools often miss the short, sharp changes that matter most on the ground – especially when snow and ice darken due to dust, sediment, or sudden shifts in mountain weather and seasonal climate. The inability to accurately represent local climate conditions and their future trends in the tropical Andes has serious consequences. Simply put: the ice is melting faster than our forecasts suggest, and people who have lived with these glaciers for generations are already witnessing their disappearance.
In the map above, we show the ice extent of the Chimborazo Glacier Complex – defined as areas where ice thickness remains above 0.1 meters. These outlines compare the year 2000 with projections under different climate scenarios. Strikingly, our model under the most pessimistic emissions pathway already predicts a glacier footprint that closely matches what we observe today – even though that scenario represents conditions projected decades into the future. This mismatch reinforces a growing concern: glacier models calibrated for long-term trends are struggling to keep up with the pace of actual change on the ground. In regions like the tropical Andes, where glaciers respond sharply to subtle shifts in temperature, precipitation, and surface darkening, this modelling gap means that communities are facing water stress and cultural loss far sooner than expected.
Jane Griffiths, RSGS Collections Volunteer
RSGS holds a set of lecture slides of British Columbia, originally produced in 1892, amongst which are early images of what would become the famous Glacier Hotel in the Selkirk Mountains.
“The Great Glacier of the Selkirks, a vast sea of ice that glistens in a silvery white sheen and appears to rise above the forest.” William Spotswood Green
As a condition of joining Canada in 1871, British Columbia had insisted on a transcontinental railway, connecting the former Dominion with eastern Canada. But for years the seemingly impenetrable barrier of the Selkirk Mountains, with its steep peaks and deep gorges had defied the efforts of engineers and surveyors: “I do not think I can ever forget that terrible walk” wrote Sir Sandford Fleming. “We are from five to eight hundred feet high on a path of from ten to fifteen inches wide … the slopes below us are so steep that a stone would roll into the torrent in the abyss below.”
In an attempt to avoid hundreds of extra miles of track, the company strove to create as direct a route as possible and, in 1882, A.B. Rogers finally confirmed the existence of a way through the pass that subsequently bore his name. Laying of the line now gathered momentum. 1885 saw the last spike being driven in by a Director of the Canadian Pacific Railway, Sir Donald A Smith (1st Baron Strathcona) at Craigellachie. East and West were finally united from coast to coast. Behind him – resplendent in top hat – stood an equally significant figure in the history of railway development in Canada, Sir Sandford Fleming. Born in Kirkcaldy in 1827, Fleming became involved in mapping and surveying for the CPR through the Rockies in the 1870’s, and undertook later expeditions to confirm the viability of Rogers Pass. No stranger to the hardships involved, he was, nonetheless, deeply affected by the grandeur of the landscapes through which he toiled: “We had no wood for fire, no boughs for beds, we were wet with perspiration and eating snow to quench our thirst, but the grandeur of the view, sublime beyond conception, crowded out all thoughts of our discomforts.” Fleming went on to play a major role in the safety and reliability of the railways in Canada, insisting wherever possible on stone or iron supports and bridges. Travellers also had him to thank for the introduction of the 24 hour clock, based on one hour time zones, rather than the convention of using local time that had governed them hitherto.
relatively light and there were a number of steep gradients. In a dazzling feat of engineering travellers would find themselves experiencing the sensation of “gliding... over bridges which stretch like immense slender spiders far over the top of lofty pines,” according to an unnamed historian of the time. However, there would be a price to pay for this choice of route. One early omen was the requirement for massive snowsheds to be erected along the line. Another was that heavy dining cars proved too challenging to haul over this section of the track and an alternative had to be created for numbers of hungry travellers. This came initially in the form of “dining stations” where passengers could disembark to enjoy a brief meal. Accordingly, in 1886 when the line finally opened, the Glacier House and its station came into being.
Open primarily between May and October, and built less than two miles from the toe of the “Great Glacier” (later re- named Illecillewaet after the nearby river), the small Swiss-style chalet was initially served by only one line. Water flowed from a cascade fed by glacial springs that also supplied a huge fountain. The latter was edged with white quartz stones but, owing to the widespread belief that quartz often contained gold, a CPR employee was designated to guard the stones from optimistic visitors. Electricity did not reach the hotel for another ten years. Nonetheless, it grew rapidly in popularity and the limited accommodation sometimes led to overnight guests returning after a few days’ absence to find their rooms had been re-let. A sleeping car had to be set up in the sidings for overflow guests. The wine cellar was wellstocked and dishes on the menu were described as being served in “baskets of ferns and flowers.”
“Her identity will probably never be known, but the photographer has captured her obvious delight in a landscape now irretrievably altered - but frozen in time.”
Blanketed in snow in winter, the meadow beside the hotel was described as perfumed with a carpet of white clover in summer. The surrounding area offered guests the opportunity to experience immense forests of conifers fringing lush meadows, spectacular drifts of wild flowers and shrubs, before reaching rare species, nestling high in the alpine zones amongst ancient ice. Lecturing to the RSGS in Aberdeen in 1916, Julia Henshaw, celebrated Canadian botanist, described gathering “bouquets of azalea, wild heliotrope, Indian pink, and large yellow daisies.”
The legacy of many Scots in the area is well-documented. Scottish names were scattered lavishly over the ranges and peaks, honouring achievements within British Columbia itself and elsewhere. Fleming himself was commemorated by both a mountain range and the peak of Mount Sir Sandford; Mount Geikie paid tribute to Sir Archibald Geikie, recipient of the 1905 RSGS Livingstone Medal and Director General of the British Geological Survey. But at times it became difficult to keep pace with this period of rapid naming as curious visitors increased. One hotel owner responded with: “You can call it what you darn like: every outfit that comes along gives it a new name and I’ll be shot if I can remember what the last one was.”
This section of the railway was built at speed; the tracks were
The glacier itself, then measuring about 1,000 metres from toe to peak and covering an area of some 6.4 km sq. immediately lured travellers, alpinists and scientists. Swiss guides were recruited to guide visitors up to the glacier, sometimes twice daily. Later the CPR would even create a village nearby for them to stay – named Edelweiss. This proximity led to a (possibly apocryphal) account of a guest asking whether the glacier had been placed beside the hotel by the railway rather than the reverse! Lady Agnes Macdonald, wife of Canada’s first Prime Minister, recorded her experience of travelling “cowcatcher” on the engine over the Great Divide down to the coast: “Sunlight flashes on glaciers, on huge towering masses of rock crowned with magnificent tree crests all round us…. and on a hundred rainbows made by the foaming, dashing river.”
One of the hotel’s earliest guests was the renowned botanical painter, photographer and amateur glaciologist Mary Vaux Walcott. Carrying heavy glass plates on expeditions up and down the mountains before the advent of film cameras, she and her husband photographed the glacier consistently between the 1880’s and 1930’s, producing an invaluable record that contributed significantly to glacial studies. The Smithsonian Institution produced a five volume set of her botanical watercolours in 1933, the year in which she also became President of the Society of Women Geographers. By 1907 Illecillewaet was described as the most visited glacier in the Americas. The original building had been supplemented by an annexe, re-named the Glacier Hotel and now sported an observatory and bowling alley. The well-stocked cellar frequently doubled as a dark room for photographers. Décor included mineral samples, rocks and flowers, with guests commenting on the “homey atmosphere and camaraderie.” The combination of remoteness and accessibility to the glacier enhanced the destination’s appeal but, ultimately, became its undoing. In 1887 one storm alone dropped nine feet of snow on Rogers Pass and trains were cancelled for months. In 1910 a huge snowslide killed 58 men attempting to clear the tracks nearby and the route was eventually altered with the introduction of the Connaught tunnel in 1916. But visitor numbers had already begun to decline: the new route did not pass directly beside the hotel, dining cars could now be run over the tracks and the CPR was investing in other, more accessible locations. In 1925 the hotel closed. The heyday of the most visited glacier in the Americas was waning. Little remains of the hotel today, but the base of its famous fountain can still be seen amongst the meadow grasses, beside the campsites and hiking trails. Exactly one hundred years later, in 2025 the UN declared the International Year of Glacier Preservation. Recent estimates suggest that the Illecillewaet ice has retreated over 1.5 kilometres horizontally and over 600 metres vertically since consistent records began. The race is now on to protect and preserve the fragile flora and fauna of the region wherever possible, exemplified in such rarities as the Glacier Lily and the extraordinary glacial ice worms that emerge in the summer sun, to name only two.
Amongst the many glass plate slides held by RSGS, one box contains three images seem to embody the spirit of those early visitors. In the first, two women fish from a rowing boat against a backdrop of pine trees. The second shows a distant view of tiny canoes afloat on a vast lake encircled by dramatic peaks. The final image is taken high in the mountains; a woman on horseback smiles confidently at the camera. Behind her stretches a vast ice field. Her identity will probably never be known, but the photographer has captured her obvious delight in a landscape now irretrievably altered – but frozen in time.
Hannah Picton, PhD student, School of Geosciences, University of Edinburgh
The world’s first human-made satellite, Sputnik 1, was launched on 4th October 1957, marking the start of the Space Age. Today, society is highly dependent on these orbiting objects; whether it be the map that you use on your phone, the weather forecast you check before leaving the house, or the secure banking you rely upon, satellites are now deeply embedded in our everyday lives. However, satellites are also becoming increasingly important in enabling scientists to monitor and better understand some of the most remote and inhospitable places on Earth – ice sheets.
Together, the Antarctic Ice Sheet (AIS) and Greenland Ice Sheet (GrIS) cover ~ 14.0 million km2 and hold an estimated 29.5 million km3 of ice; if both were to melt, global mean sea level would rise by ~ 65.3 m. Even a small fraction of this sea level rise would be catastrophic for low-lying nations such as Bangladesh and the Netherlands, as well as large parts of the United Kingdom. In Scotland, areas identified as particularly at risk include the Uists, Orkney and the inner firths of the Forth, Moray and Solway. Under a rapidly warming climate, monitoring these ice sheets and improving our understanding of the factors controlling their behaviour is therefore critical. In the following article, we explore how satellites have transformed the way scientists study the ice sheets that shape our planet.
Ice sheet mass balance
The mass balance of an ice sheet is like a bank account; it reflects the balance between deposits (mass gain) and withdrawals (mass loss), described as accumulation and ablation, respectively.
dividing it by the time between the two images, ice speed can be calculated. Today, much of this tracking is automated using advanced algorithms such as autoRIFT (autonomous Repeat Image Feature Tracking), which can track thousands of features across vast areas quickly and efficiently. For example, as part of NASA’s MEaSUREs (Making Earth System Data Records for Use in Research Environments) program, maps of ice surface speed are produced for the entire GrIS every 6 to 12 days! These maps are derived from radar images captured by the European Space Agency’s (ESA) Sentinel-1A and Sentinel-1B satellites, allowing scientists to observe and study short-term variations in ice flow.
“The mass balance of an ice sheet is like a bank account; it reflects the balance between deposits (mass gain) and withdrawals (mass loss).”
The mass balance therefore represents a key indicator of the health of the ice sheet; a positive mass balance indicates the ice sheet is gaining mass, whilst a negative mass balance indicates it is losing mass. Although the mass balance of an individual glacier can be estimated using in-situ ablation stakes manually drilled into the ice, measuring mass change at the continental scale is far more challenging. In 2002, however, this became possible with the launch of NASA’s GRACE (Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment) mission.
The GRACE mission, which operated from 2002 to 2017, consisted of two satellites that orbited the earth approximately 220 km apart, measuring changes in the earth’s gravity field. As each satellite passed over regions with more or less mass, the gravitational pull on each satellite changed and thus the distance between them was altered slightly. By precisely measuring these tiny variations in the distance between the two satellites, scientists were able to determine changes in mass across the ice sheets at a monthly resolution. GRACE, together with its successor mission, GRACE-FO (Follow-On), has been critical in revealing that both the AIS and GrIS have been losing mass at accelerating rates over the past three decades.
Using satellite images, scientists are able to measure ice speed through a technique called feature tracking. This involves identifying a distinct surface feature, such as a crevasse, and tracking its movement between two consecutive images, much like tracking a log drifting downstream in a river. By measuring the distance the feature has moved and
Measuring the height of the ice surface can provide valuable insight into how the shape of an ice sheet is changing over time. Ice surface height is typically measured using satellite altimetry, a technique that involves sending a short radar or laser pulse to the Earth’s surface and recording the time taken for the signal to return, much like a bat listening for the return of its chirp. As both the speed of the signal and altitude of the satellite are known, this travel time can be converted into a precise elevation measurement. By repeating these measurements over months and years, scientists can detect even small variations in the height of the ice surface, identifying regions where the ice is thinning or steadily building up. When combined with digital elevation models of the underlying topography, these observations can also be used to estimate ice thickness.
Over recent decades, two satellite missions have been particularly important for measuring ice surface height across both the AIS and GrIS. NASA’S IceSAT (Ice, Cloud, and Land Elevation Satellite) mission (2003-2010) and its successor IceSAT-2 (Photo 1), launched in 2018, use laser altimetry to measure ice surface elevation. Meanwhile, ESA’s CryoSat-2 mission (Photo 2), launched in 2010, uses a specialised radar altimeter capable of measuring height even over steep or fast-flowing regions. Together, data from these missions have revealed important trends, showing that recent ice thinning in Greenland has been concentrated largely along the fast-flowing marine-terminating margins. However, the measurements have also captured smaller, dynamic features; in Antarctica, for example, changes in ice surface height have been used to detect the drainage of subglacial lakes, invisible to the naked eye!
With air temperatures rising, surface melting of the AIS and GrIS is becoming increasingly widespread (Photo 3). In locations where this surface meltwater is able to reach the bed of the ice sheet, it can allow the ice to slide more easily, driving short-term increases in ice speed. Satellite data provide a powerful way to observe this dynamic process in action. Using optical imagery acquired from missions such as Landsat and Sentinel-2, scientists can identify rivers and supraglacial lakes, before tracking their evolution and drainage throughout the melt season. In recent years, machine learning and artificial intelligence (AI) have been
used to automate this process, allowing maps of surface melt extent to be produced regularly across large spatial areas. The understanding gained from these satellite-derived maps has been crucial for learning how surface hydrology can influence broader ice sheet dynamics.
The key takeaway Satellites have revolutionised the way scientists study ice sheets, providing the critical scale, coverage and continuity of measurements that would simply be impossible to achieve through fieldwork alone. From tracking changes in ice sheet mass and flow speed to measuring small variations in ice elevation, satellite data enables scientists to not only monitor what is happening, but also to explore why changes occur. This process-level understanding is essential for improving predictions of ice sheet behaviour and ultimately constraining projections of future sea level rise. So, the next time you check your phone for directions, remember that the same satellites that help you navigate daily life are also helping scientists to understand our ice sheets, informing policy decisions for vulnerable coastal communities across the world.
Did you know?
Jakobshavn Isbræ (Sermeq Kujalleq) is Greenland’s fastest flowing outlet glacier, reaching speeds of 16.8 km/yr!
Richard Davis, Professor Emeritus, Political Science, Brigham Young University, Utah
In 1997, a film hit American theaters that spun a seemingly implausible tale: a U.S. president starts a war in Albania to distract attention from a sex scandal weeks before an election. “Wag the Dog” was well received by critics and audiences. But the film’s premises seemed fantastic.
Fast forward to December 2025. The nation is on the verge of seeing the release of Jeffrey Epstein’s files, which may implicate Donald Trump in Epstein’s sex-trafficking crimes. Trump has spent months seeking to block release of the files while simultaneously claiming there is nothing in them that would damage him. Now, as the Justice Department is statutorily required to release the files, the nation may discover whether Trump is right.
Suddenly, Trump sends a US Navy flotilla to the coasts of South America and threatens to invade Venezuela. Trump claims Venezuela is the source of fentanyl entering the U.S.
And the administration has considered naming the drug cartel they claim is run by Venezuelan dictator Nicolas Maduro as a terrorist organization.
Then, on January 3, US soldiers kidnap Maduro and transport him to the United States for trial. Simultaneously, Trump threatens more military action in Venezuela to root out Maduro supporters from the government and to secure the nation’s oil industry.
As if that were not enough, as anti-government protests erupt in Iran in January 2026, Trump also sends a US Navy armada to the Middle East and promises to use military force if Iran suppresses protests. He signals to protesters that “help was on the way,” suggesting he was planning an attack on Iran.
Is this a case of “wag the dog” or simply coincidence?
Plainly, Trump is attempting to deflect attention away from the potentially damaging information Americans soon may view from the Epstein files. He needs some way to turn the public from news of this scandal. Maybe this means touting a patriotic moment where Americans will “rally round the flag” to support American troops in harm’s way.
Media attention to a war will do that. Military successes will dominate the headlines, talk shows, and news podcasts. By comparison, the Epstein files will seem like a trivial matter. Why does this seem more like a “wag the dog” moment rather than the resolution of an immediate crisis. There is no crisis here that hasn’t been around for some time already. Venezuela has not been a threat to the United States as Donald Trump claims. Venezuela is a minor supplier of illegal drugs into the United States. The major sources are China
and Mexico, not Venezuela.
Undoubtedly, Maduro needed to be removed from office. He was a corrupt dictator who silenced the opposition, implemented a police state, and disrespected elections and the will of the public. Moreover, he destroyed the nation’s economy with his economic policies and provoked the exodus of millions of Venezuelans.
But Maduro had been doing that for several years, much like other dictators Trump was not targeting. These include North Korea, Nicaragua, China, and Russia. If the Trump administration wanted to rid the world of dictators, there were worse ones than Maduro, such as Equatorial Guinea’s Teodoro Obiang, North Korea’s Kim Jong-Un, and Russia’s Vladimir Putin. Why Venezuela and why now?
Venezuela is more proximate to the U.S. and therefore easier to send a military force to intimidate. Venezuelans voted against Maduro, and a majority wanted regime change. And the Venezuelan military is relatively weak. But the main reason was that Maduro was a left-leaning dictator. Trump has no problem with right-leaning dictators such as Putin and Jong-Un. Kidnapping Maduro satisfied a GOP base clamoring to take on socialists.
Similarly, Iran is not a direct danger to the United States. It is, however, an easy target since it has long history of open hostility to the United States. But the promise of military action was a chimera because Trump was not going to follow through on his threat. The American people would not support military action in Iran. Trump’s action captured headlines, as he expected, for awhile before he backed off from his promise to protestors and claimed Iran was negotiating.
So why these military actions now? Bad news could be coming soon. Shifting public attention away from that bad news may minimize the damage to Trump. There is a risk to his reputation since in Venezuela he has removed Maduro but kept in place the regime he threatened to remove. And in Iran he has backed off in the face of actual military conflict, which he never intended to engage in. These are risky moves by Trump. But if the Epstein files are as bad for Trump as he seems to think they are, that risk may be worth it.
“So why these military actions now? Bad news could be coming soon.”
Donald Rothwell, Professor of International Law, Australian National University
The January 3 US military operation in Venezuela seizing President Nicolás Maduro and his wife, Cilia Adela Flores de Maduro, was in equal measure audacious and illegal under international law.
It’s even more breathtaking that the Trump administration now says it “will run” Venezuela on an interim basis. The US will also seek to control the country’s vast oil interests.
Irrespective of its contested domestic politics and the chequered record of the Maduro regime, Venezuela remains a recognised sovereign state under international law. This includes permanent sovereignty over its natural resources. Any US seizure of Venezuelan oil would be a further violation of international law.
But the US hasn’t tried to justify its strikes with international law. Instead, the Trump administration is using domestic laws to ignore global rules entirely. It’s a new strategy, but one with no international legal basis, regardless of how you slice it. Making the international domestic
Both the first and second Trump administrations have shown animosity towards the Maduro regime.
The US government has consistently raised two key issues: the role Venezuela has played in illegal Latin American migrants entering the US, and support for the flow of drugs into the US.
Both were major issues during the 2024 US presidential election campaign and are key planks of the Trump MAGA movement.
At the core of how the Trump administration has advanced its legal campaign against Venezuela and the Maduro regime has been its reliance on US law.
Starting in September, the US began targeting small boats linked to the Venezuelan drug trade through military strikes at sea.
The US justified these, in part, on the basis of extra-territorial enforcement of US laws against known cartels shipping drugs throughout the Caribbean to American entry points.
In December, the US Coast Guard began to pursue and seize oil tankers subject to US sanctions. This conduct was also justified on the basis of US law, with the sanctioned tankers being stopped and seized in waters off the Venezuelan coast on the high seas.
US law enforcement has now been extended to the seizure, arrest and detention of the Maduros.
By relying on the argument that the US is enforcing its own laws, the Trump administration provides itself with a domestic legal basis for its actions, no matter what international law may have to say.
This is a clear case of US exceptionalism towards international law, of which there is a long history. It reflects a US view that its own laws prevail over all other law. According to the US, international law should not unduly limit its ability to advance its national interests.
“The Trump administration is relying on US domestic laws to justify its actions in Venezuela.”
The legitimacy of the Maduro regime has also been called into question. There were disputed election outcomes in 2018 and 2024.
However, the legitimacy or otherwise of the Maduro regime is not a legal basis for a military intervention.
Rather, the Trump administration is relying on US domestic laws to justify its actions in Venezuela. A 2020 US grand jury indictment of Maduro and his wife for drug trafficking underpins the legal argument.
That Maduro has been paraded before television cameras in New York like any other detained prisoner further emphasises the importance of US domestic law in this matter. It’s unprecedented for a foreign head of state to be arrested in their presidential compound, detained and legally processed in the US within the space of 24 hours.
Maduro and his wife will eventually face trial on various criminal charges. That Nicolás Maduro is the Venezuelan president and therefore entitled to head of state immunity from criminal prosecution before a US court will presumably be set aside as the Trump administration does not recognise the legitimacy of his presidency.
Likewise, US courts will probably not bother themselves too much with the manner of Maduro’s arrest via US extraterritorial law enforcement in a foreign state.
In the normal course of events, once the US grand jury indictment had been released, Maduro’s extradition could have been sought via a US arrest warrant.
The Trump administration likely assumed any such extradition request would have been ignored. So, instead, it used the US military to enter Maduro’s Caracas compound to facilitate his arrest by Department of Justice officials.
It’s also based on an assumption that any international opprobium it may encounter can be managed or safely ignored.
The 3 things to watch
There are three immediate regional and global lessons from these events.
First, the Trump administration has shown a vast capacity to sanction whomever it chooses based on domestic political whims. Individuals, entities and corporations have all been targeted through presidential executive orders, laws and force. Many will be on high alert.
Second, while the cumulative US actions against Venezuela violate the United Nations Charter, the UN will be virtually powerless to constrain the US. This is due to the veto powers held by the permanent members of its Security Council, not to mention Trump’s disdain for the UN generally.
Third, US allies and partners need to be very aware of the ramifications of this exceptional US law enforcement practice.
If, down the line, the US military encounters a more robust response than it did in Venezuela, it could trigger NATO treaty obligations for European countries and Canada, and ANZUS treaty obligations for Australia.
So, if the US continues down this road, there’s every chance the consequences of its interventionism could be felt by
Jo Woolf, RSGS Writer-in-Residence
In 1965, on leave from his regiment in the Royal Scots Greys, Ranulph Fiennes stood and gazed at the ice-cliffs of Norway’s Jostedal glacier. From a plateau rising to 1,957 metres (6,420 feet) above sea level, the largest glacier in continental Europe extends long white arms into scores of surrounding valleys, feeding slow-moving rivers of ice that terminate in turquoise glacial lakes. Aged 21 and ripe for adventure, Fiennes was impressed by the ‘massive vertical splendour of giant blocks of ice, tumbling haphazardly down giddy cliffs to the lakes below.’
“Aged 21 and ripe for adventure, Fiennes was impressed by the massive vertical splendour of giant blocks of ice, tumbling haphazardly down giddy cliffs to the lakes below.”
Fiennes knew that, in former centuries, coastal dwellers used to drive cattle and ponies across the Jostedal ice-plateau to markets in eastern Norway. But the glacier’s gently sloping edges had begun to melt and recede, and in the mid-1800s they became too steep for livestock to climb. Few humans now ventured up to the plateau, largely because it was heavily crevassed and notorious for bad weather. The old ‘drift trails’ were still there, however, and an idea began to take shape in Fiennes’ mind.
From a practical point of view, a simple desire to cross the Jostedal glacier on one of the old trails was insufficient. To obtain sufficient backing, an expedition needed a scientific programme. In the spring of 1970, Fiennes approached Dr Gunnar Østrem of Oslo University, who confirmed that he would welcome an accurate survey of the Fåbergstølsbre, one of the valley glaciers at the eastern end of the plateau. New data could be compared with older maps, helping scientists to ascertain whether the glacier was growing, receding or changing its course. But in order to make such a survey, the team would need to visit existing trig points that stood high on the main glacier, rimmed by crevasse fields. Fiennes planned to ski across the glacier with loaded sledges, but getting everything up there was a logistical problem. He wrote: ’Delicate theodolites, radios for communication… bulky poles and tripods, and a hundred other items, would have to be transported on to the plateau top somehow.’ The only ‘safe’ track, up steep glacial moraines and broken rock, was dangerous enough for climbers with rucksacks, let alone eight-foot sledges and fifteen-foot marker poles. Hiring a helicopter was prohibitively expensive. But, as Fiennes explained to his prospective team members, there was an attractive alternative: they would parachute in. For the best chance of fine weather, they would do so in August. A rigorous training schedule began.
Viewed from a height of 10,000 feet through the door of a Cessna seaplane, their drop zone on the Jostedal ice-field looked worryingly small. In fact, it was only 200 metres square, and accuracy was essential as there were precipices and jagged rocks around the edges. Fiennes and five
companions, among them Geoff Holder who was one of the British Army’s leading free-fall parachutists, needed the utmost skill to guide themselves down. Soon afterwards the plane made a low pass to drop the carefully-wrapped equipment. With rough weather closing in, there was just time to collect the gear, pitch the tents and fire up gas stoves under pans of rehydrated curry and beef broth. Fiennes had reckoned that three weeks on top of the glacier should be sufficient to carry out the survey; he had also invited a geologist, a biologist and a glaciologist to join the expedition, and their findings would be shared not just with Oslo University but with the Scott Polar Research Institute and the British Museum. Some of the team, including Henrik Forss, a medical doctor, had chosen to climb up to the plateau from the valley below.
Their first task was to split into three teams, each heading for a different trig point from where they would take sightings of the other two. To reach one of the points, the surveyors had to descend into a valley and then tackle a 5,000-foot gully. However, once the teams were in place and communicating by radio, mist rolled in, the wind strengthened to gale force and what they’d imagined to be a straightforward daylight job became a desperate night-time struggle to navigate back to camp in the teeth of a blizzard.
Revisiting the trig points in calmer weather, they then set about planting marker poles at regular intervals along the snout of the glacier. But it soon became apparent that these poles were moving with the ice, and occasionally popping out altogether. Their only option was to retrace their steps, insert new ones, and take fresh sightings. Fiennes wrote: ‘Like a family of woodpeckers, we were back to work with the hammers and stakes…’
With the survey complete, the team packed up their tents and struck out along one of the drift trails that Fiennes had identified. This ran west from the Fåbergstølsbre and meandered for about 40 kilometres along a glacial arm called the Briksdalsbre. All their equipment and remaining food supplies were pulled behind them on sledges; they were also carrying coils of climbing rope, for a specific purpose. At the tip of the Briksdalsbre, an ice-fall of ‘unparalleled steepness’ dropped about 3,000 feet into a small lake. Fiennes and his survey party were planning to descend this ice-fall, largely by abseil.
It was a daring idea in itself, but there was an additional danger that Fiennes had not foreseen. He’d last observed the ice-fall in March, ‘when it rose silent and still into the mist.’ By August, however, the sun’s warmth had transformed it into a dynamic, unstable monster. Standing on the brink of the Briksdalsbre, all they could hear was the thunder of falling ice. Fiennes observed: ’A squadron of Concordes passing directly overhead might have produced a similar volume of sound, but I doubt it.’
Communicating by radio with team members in the lakeside base camp, Fiennes was advised to turn back. He replied
that it was impossible. Meanwhile, in the ice near his feet, a crevasse unzipped itself, leaving a gaping fissure that ran for many yards across the surface.
The first sledge tumbled into a chasm at the top of the ice-fall. Shortly afterwards, the second was similarly engulfed. Luckily, the men were still carrying enough rope to make the descent. They lowered their 60-lb rucksacks separately over the worst stretches, working quietly because a loud noise might spark an avalanche. Fiennes wrote that the surface they trod on was ‘a nightmare in blue and white’: he set one foot gingerly onto an ice-bridge and hastily withdrew it when the bridge sent a shower of fragments into the space below.
Zig-zagging around crevasses cost time, and it was clear that they wouldn’t make it down in one day. Instead, they faced the almost unthinkable prospect of camping overnight. On a rock ledge deep within a bergschrund, the five of them huddled together in a three-man tent, fumbling to remove their boots with benumbed fingers that began to throb as the blood returned.
At daybreak, the trials began again. A bottleneck of ice crested the final section, which swept majestically down towards the lake. In the morning sun, its fractured surface was disintegrating at random. ‘It was obvious,’ wrote Fiennes, ‘that only luck would see us safely down the next teetering gradient.’
But their luck was severely tested. After one false step, Patrick Brook, the radio operator, fell out of sight. His team-mates quickly secured his rope, but he had fallen into a crevasse, and loose blocks of ice had tumbled on top of him, sealing him in.
Geoff Holder went down and heaved the ice away; Patrick was hauled out, miraculously unhurt.
An abseil down 400 feet of broken ice felt like an endless ordeal. As Fiennes watched the last two men descending, a wide section of ice ‘teetered briefly, as though in slow motion, and then, as a numbing roar sounded its onslaught, came rushing down the gully towards us.’ Everyone ducked instinctively; Geoff, still on the rope, was swept aside and temporarily disappeared. When the avalanche subsided he was still there: he’d lost his grip but was saved by the carabiner attached to his waist.
Even in the last few hundred feet, they couldn’t afford to relax. Unbalanced by his rucksack, Patrick swung out sharply as he landed on a ledge, and a spike from his crampon bit into Geoff’s leg. A makeshift tourniquet was needed, and then observers below were guiding them by radio down to the lake. A sprint between showers of ice brought them to safety, by which time they were giggling with euphoria and relief. After a well-earned rest there was a final stage to the expedition: a descent of the turbulent Briksdalsbre river which flows out of the lake. Among Fiennes’ surveyors was Roger Chapman, who had led the whitewater team on Colonel John Blashford-Snell’s Blue Nile expedition of 1968, and he had also borrowed two of its rubber boats. Wisely by-passing a 200foot waterfall, they navigated safely down to the quieter waters of the Nordfjord, ‘a smooth, shining highway to the North Sea.’
The survey conducted by the British Jostedals Expedition resulted in a three-colour map of the Fåbergstølsbre glacier tongue, and showed that the glacier had retreated 170 metres since 1964. Among their other findings, the expedition’s biologist, Brendan O’Brien, collected at least 32 species of Collembola (tiny arthropods) from the periglacial area.
Ranulph Twisleton-Wykeham-Fiennes, Ice Fall in Norway (1972)
Ranulph Fiennes, Cold (2013)
Capt Roger Chapman, ’The 1970 Jostedals Expedition’, The Green Howards Gazette https://greenhowards.org.uk/the-1970jostedals-glacier-expedition/
“Standing on the brink of the Briksdalsbre, all they could hear was the thunder of falling ice, and a crevasse unzipped itself, leaving a gaping fissure that ran for many yards across the surface.”
Chris Fleet FRSGS, Map Curator, National Library of Scotland
This striking and attractive map by the Flemish mapmaker, Abraham Ortelius (1527-98), is the earliest printed map to show and name most of Iceland’s principal glaciers. Most of this local information was compiled in a manuscript map in 1585, using local surveys, astronomy, and indigenous knowledge, by Gudbrandur Thorlaksson, bishop of Hólar, Iceland (c.1542–1627), which he sent via Danish historian Anders Sørensen Vedel to Ortelius. Incorporated into the 1587 French edition of Theatrum Orbis Terrarum – the world’s first modern atlas (1570) – it preserves Thorlaksson’s
detailed topography, fjords, and over 200 place names, enhanced by formidably magnificent sea monsters. Dominating the center, Mount Hekla erupts, inscribed: “Hekla, perpetually condemned to storms and snow, vomits stones with a horrible roar.” Its medieval reputation as Hell’s gateway encouraged folklore of escaping souls. Blending observation and myth, Ortelius’ Islandia transformed Iceland into a realm of wonder and amazement for armchair explorers, vividly capturing its glaciers amid fire and ice.
“Hekla, perpetually condemned to storms and snow, vomits stones with a horrible roar.”
Abraham Ortelius, Islandia (Antwerp, 1592). Image courtesy of the National Library of Scotland. View online at: https://maps.nls.uk/view/125366029
Dr James Kirkham, Chief Science Adviser and Coordinator, The Ambition on Melting Ice High Level Group on Sea Level Rise and Mountain Water Resources
In an era of increasing geopolitical instability and renewed interest in the Earth’s frozen regions, a broad coalition of nations argues that protecting the Earth’s snow and ice stores is in the overwhelming global interest. The World Meteorological Organization has confirmed that 2025 was among the three hottest years on record, with a global average temperature of 1.44°C above the 1850–1900 average. The last ten years have been the warmest since records began 175 years ago. This rapid heating of the Earth, driven by humanity’s greenhouse gas emissions, is having a visible and dramatic effect on the cryosphere: one of the most sensitive parts of the global climate system. Europe has lost nearly 40% of its glacier ice over the last two decades, and the number of glaciers disappearing each year in the Alps is predicted to peak in the 2030s. The global decline of glaciers and snowpack will impact billions of people that rely on their meltwater for agriculture, hydropower and other human activities. Combined with losses from the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets, which have quadrupled since the 1990s, accelerating global ice losses have contributed to a doubling of the rate of sea-level rise over the last three decades. Melting ice from glaciers, the polar ice sheets, sea ice, and the thawing of permafrost is therefore already impacting coastlines, ecosystems, economies, industries and the livelihoods of billions of people across the world. These impacts will only continue to become more serious as temperatures rise further.
“There can be no winners in a world with depleted and destabilised snow and ice stores, and we must all continue to reiterate this truth.”
Slowing or preventing further cryosphere loss requires countries to undertake the deep, rapid and sustained emissions reductions needed to transition to a low-carbon economy. Proactive adaptation efforts and comprehensive scientific monitoring will also be essential to respond to impacts that have already been locked in. The level of ambition of international climate policies, combined with how effectively these efforts can be implemented, will ultimately decide how much ice will be left on Earth over the coming centuries, and the extent to which humanity is able to adapt to the impacts of a changing cryosphere in a rapidly warming world. Given the urgent need to raise the plight of the Earth’s cryosphere at the highest political level, a group of 20 nations founded the Ambition on Melting Ice (AMI) High Level Group on Sea-Level Rise and Mountain Water Resources at the COP27 climate summit in Egypt in 2022. Under the leadership of the group’s co-chairs Chile and Iceland, this ministerial-level group has since grown to encompass a broad coalition of
25 governments representing polar, mountain, low-lying, and downstream nations; all of which will suffer severe impacts from continuing loss of the planet’s snow and ice. The objective of AMI is to increase political and public awareness of the irreversible global consequences of cryosphere loss, thus increasing the urgency of meaningful climate action.
In 2021, tense negotiations at COP26 resulted in the reaffirmation of the importance of the 1.5°C Paris Agreement limit via the Glasgow Climate Pact. Amid efforts by some countries to climb down from this pledge in Egypt the following year, the establishment of AMI during the final days of COP27 had a clear and immediate impact on negotiations to hold the line on 1.5°C in the COP27 Cover Decision. Efforts by the group at COP27 also led to the first ever reference to cryosphere concerns in the operational text of a COP within the section “Science and Urgency”. In the years following its establishment, AMI has continued to hold high-level events on the margins of key climate and environment meetings, as well as strategy sessions where climate negotiators are briefed by eminent researchers on the latest cryosphere science. These strategy sessions have fostered strong uptake of evidence from the cryosphere within climate negotiations by governments and the media despite the geopolitical tensions that have dominated climate circles in recent years.
Building off the designation of 2025 as the UN International Year of Glaciers’ Preservation, COP30 saw continued interest in cryosphere issues. In Belém, AMI coordinated a ministerial meeting presided by the Icelandic Minister of Environment Jóhann Páll Jóhannsson, with COP29 President Mukhtar Babayev also opening the meeting. High-level statements underscoring the urgency to remain within 1.5°C to limit cryosphere losses came from Chile, Tajikistan, Senegal, Nepal, Liberia, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Georgia, and Monaco. Alarmingly, despite these efforts, several references to concerning cryosphere losses were ultimately diluted or removed from the COP30 Research and Systematic Observation negotiation track as part of a wider pushback on science that saw countries unable to highlight the consensus role of the IPCC as the best available science to inform climate negotiations.
As we begin 2026, the AMI group continues to seek new members and is exploring possibilities for ambitious subnational entities with shared concerns to join the group as well. AMI will continue to oppose those who wish to obfuscate science and slow the pace of the green transition at the highest level. There can be no winners in a world with depleted and destabilised snow and ice stores, and we must all continue to reiterate this truth as countries continue to watch dramatic changes unfold in the Earth’s frozen regions.
Dr Anshuman Bhardwaj and Dr Lydia Sam, School of Geosciences, University of Aberdeen
In 2025, designated by the United Nations as the International Year of Glaciers’ Preservation, the world has been confronted with an uncomfortable reality: the thawing of the mountain cryosphere, long perceived as a gradual environmental concern, is now accelerating into a fast-evolving hazard with global consequences. Across continents, communities living in and downstream of high mountain regions are facing escalating risks as glaciers retreat, mountain permafrost thaws, and extreme weather events intensify. Together, these processes are transforming once-stable mountain environments into highly dynamic and increasingly dangerous landscapes.
2025 alone has offered sobering examples. In Blatten, Switzerland, renewed concern over glacier instability and rock slope failure has underscored that even the closely monitored European Alps are entering a new era of risk. In Dharali, in the Indian Himalaya, as depicted in the figure, destructive flooding followed intense localised rainfall interacting with glacier-fed catchments already destabilised by long-term warming. In Til village and several other locations along the Nepal–China border, high-mountain lakes have generated repeated outbursts, damaging infrastructure and forcing evacuations. Meanwhile, the Andean city of Huaraz continues to live under the persistent threat of lake outburst hazards, a reminder that defreezing mountains and cascading hazards are a truly global phenomenon.
Although geographically dispersed, these events share a common driver: climate change is causing mountains to “defreeze”. While glacier retreat is the most visible signal, an equally important and often overlooked process is the thawing of mountain permafrost. Permafrost acts as a hidden stabilising agent, binding rock and sediment together at high elevations. As temperatures rise, this frozen ground warms and loses ice, weakening slopes and dramatically increasing the likelihood of rockfalls, landslides, and debris flows. In many cases, such slope failures interact with glaciers or moraine-dammed lakes, triggering cascading hazards that amplify impacts downstream.
The risks are further compounded by the intensification of extreme weather events. Climate change is increasing the frequency and intensity of heatwaves, heavy rainfall, and rain-on-snow events in many mountain regions. These extremes often act as immediate triggers, pushing already fragile glacier–permafrost systems beyond critical thresholds. A moraine weakened by permafrost thaw may fail during an intense storm; a destabilised slope may collapse during a heatwave, intense rain, or an earthquake, impacting glaciers or lakes below.
Increasingly, mountain disasters arise from such compound interactions rather than single, isolated causes.
In this context, advances in Earth observation are becoming indispensable. New satellite missions, most notably the NASA–
ISRO Synthetic Aperture Radar (NISAR) mission launched in 2025, are transforming our ability to monitor defreezing mountains. NISAR’s dual-frequency radar system allows scientists to detect millimetre-scale ground deformation, glacier flow changes, and slope instabilities, regardless of cloud cover or daylight. This capability is particularly valuable in high mountain regions, where persistent cloudiness and harsh conditions limit traditional optical monitoring. Combined with existing satellite constellations, NISAR enables near-global, repeat observations of glacier motion, permafrost-related ground deformation, and the subtle precursors of landslides or lake dam failure. When integrated with climate data, field measurements and local observations, such satellite-based insights can support earlier warnings and more robust risk assessments. However, technological capability alone is not enough. The challenge lies in translating vast streams of data into actionable information that can inform timely decisions on infrastructure design, land-use planning and emergency response.
The implications of defreezing mountains extend far beyond remote upland communities. Mountain regions function as the world’s water towers, supplying freshwater, hydropower and ecosystem services to billions of people downstream. Damage to infrastructure in high-altitude areas can disrupt energy production, transport corridors and transboundary river systems. Notably, recent events in the Alps demonstrate that no region, regardless of wealth or institutional capacity, is immune.
Addressing this growing crisis requires recognising defreezing mountains as a global issue that transcends national borders and disciplinary silos. The UN International Year of Glaciers’ Preservation provides a timely platform to strengthen interdisciplinary and international collaboration. Glaciologists, permafrost scientists, geomorphologists, climate scientists, engineers and social scientists must work together, alongside local communities and policymakers, to anticipate cascading hazards and design equitable adaptation strategies.
As glaciers continue to shrink and permafrost thaws under a warming climate, the question is no longer whether mountain hazards will increase, but how effectively societies can respond. The events of 2025 make one thing clear: the stability of the world’s high places can no longer be taken for granted. If defreezing mountains represent a shared global challenge, then reducing the risks they pose must become a shared global responsibility.
“The question is no longer whether mountain hazards will increase, but how effectively societies can respond.”
Anna Kurop, PhD Student, Faculty of Natural Sciences, University of Stirling
Studying past ice-stream collapse can inform us about the future of Greenland and Antarctica’s largest glaciers. A prominent example of such an ice stream used to occupy our neighbourhood – the Minch Strait in NW Scotland, bordered by the Outer Hebrides to the west. A scarcity of data in the Western Isles prevents us from knowing what exactly caused the ice-stream collapse about 19,000-16,000 years ago, and to what extent it was controlled by sea-level change. The seemingly endless, wind- and wave-swept coastline of the Outer Hebrides gazes into the Atlantic Ocean to the west and the Minch to the east. With shorelines indented into fjord-like lochs, precipitous cliffs, stretches of bare rock, acres of rubble and boulders, wide expanses of peatlands and a mosaic of thousands of lochans – travelling around the islands, it is hard to deny the feeling of isolation, inaccessibility and majestic wilderness.
Such impressions have pervaded into the common perception of the Western Isles, and perhaps Quaternary science too. Unlike the western Scottish mainland, the Outer Hebrides have been thought of as too remote from the main ice center to have hosted a significant amount of ice during the Last Glacial Maximum about 20,000 years ago. Without profound loading of the Earth’s crust by ice, very little to no isostatic submergence could take place in the islands. Isostasy relates to sinking of land into the Earth’s mantle under the weight of accumulated ice – with the weight removed, the land slowly rebounds back to its original position. As a result, after deglaciation about 15,000 years ago (‘Lateglacial’), the stable Outer Hebrides were just flooded by uninterrupted rising sea levels from melting global ice sheets. At the same time, western mainland Scotland experienced significant isostatic rebound, emerging from the sea by up to 40 meters like an unloaded buoy.
This interpretation is often fitted into current ice sheet and isostatic-adjustment models for the Outer Hebrides. It is usually supported by the lack of evidence of Lateglacial high sea levels, with plenty of evidence for lower past sea levels around the islands. However, when looking more closely, certain parts of the story do not seem to add up. Why do shorelines on either side of the Minch, and so close together (< 40 km apart), have vastly different sea level histories? Why did the Outer Hebrides not accumulate a significant thickness
of ice needed to depress the crust – despite evidence of extensive grounded ice-sheet lobes on the continental shelf to the west of the islands and around St Kilda? With very little available sea-level data from the islands, such questions are difficult to answer.
This PhD project sets out to find new evidence of the Lateglacial ice-sheet history and sea-level change in the Outer Hebrides. The project will use a range of geographical techniques to explore how changing sea-level and isostatic rebound affected the Minch Ice Stream and its collapse.
In summer 2025, we travelled to South Uist with two sediment corers, fifteen extension rods, a portable microscope, water pump, sieves, and plenty of hammers and chisels. Carrying this kit around was not easy! But it allowed us to reach sediments buried up to 10 meters deep in isolation basins – coastal bedrock depressions with a rock barrier limiting seawater entry. Depending on local sea level, an isolation basin would host a freshwater lake or be inundated by seawater – the exact conditions are recorded in the sediments accumulating at its bottom. Over the course of almost two weeks, we cored eight isolation basins stretching from Eriskay to Scalpay – covering a distance of 100 km. Sometimes fieldwork involved drowning knee-deep in mud whilst fighting off midges. A total of 27 sediment cores will be analysed in the following months for fresh- or seawater signals with microscopic indicators like diatoms and foraminifera. Radiocarbon dating of these sediments will hopefully allow us to understand the timing of events and reconstruct the sea level history of the Outer Hebrides.
With breaks to admire sea otters, golden eagles and stunning views, we also ventured into the mountains of Harris to collect samples of glacially transported boulders. Analysing them will tell us when glaciers occupied the valleys of Harris, and therefore allow the timeline of ice retreat. Pulling together both the sea-level and ice-sheet stories of the Outer Hebrides will have a fundamental importance for disentangling problems of ice thickness, isostatic loading and sea-level rise during deglaciation. Could land rebound offset sea-level rise at a retreating marine-terminating glacier –acting to stabilise the ice margin? Answering these questions is highly relevant to understand ongoing rapid changes in Greenland and Antarctica.
“Why do shorelines on either side of the Minch, less than 40 km apart, have vastly different sea-level histories?”
Dr Ailsa Guild, School of Humanities, Social Sciences and Law, University of Dundee
The wind slices across the foreland as I unzip my tent, boots crunching on volcanic gravel. I sit perched overlooking Svínafellsjökull, a glacier that sprawls like a frozen river beneath the shadow of Vatnajökull in Southeast Iceland. This is my home and my office for the next couple of weeks, a living laboratory where ice, rock, and climate come together.
Morning: Waking Up to Ice
By 8 a.m., the stove hisses as the rest of the team wakes and the coffee and porridge are made, watching the glacier glow pink in the early light. Fieldwork in Iceland means living close to the ice and every sound and shift in the wind reminds me of how dynamic this environment is. Today’s plan: explore open crevasses to study sediments trapped within the ice. These layers of sand and silt are time capsules, carried from the glacier bed and frozen into the ice structure. They reveal how debris moves through the glacier, a process that shapes the foreland and influences meltwater systems.
Midday: Into the Crevasses
By noon, I’m making my way, or as I like to call it crunching ice (the sound the crampons make as I walk) toward a gaping crevasse. Inside, the walls shimmer blue, streaked with ribbons of sediment. I photograph and log each band, noting its thickness and composition. These entrained sediments tell a story of how they are entrained into the ice. For example, basal processes, how the glacier scrapes, plucks, and transports material as it flows. At Svínafellsjökull, these patterns link to structural changes I’ve documented for over 10 years: radial crevasse development, thrust faults, and debris-rich shear planes. They’re clues to how the glacier changes as it thins and retreats.
Nearby, Kvíárjökull offers a different puzzle. In past seasons, I’ve mapped structures within the ice formed during “pulsed” flow events. These are surge-like glacier advances that bulldoze sediment forward. Understanding these glacier dynamics matters for hazard prediction: sudden advances can destabilize proglacial lakes, triggering floods for example.
Afternoon: Life on the Foreland
After hours on the ice, I return to camp, boots heavy with meltwater. The drone hums overhead, capturing crevasse patterns and moraine arcs from above. The pilots giving me a nod as I pass by. Later, I’ll compare these images with my field notes, building models of glacier evolution. But for now, I sit on a boulder, watching meltwater braid across the outwash plain. Fieldwork is exhausting, but it’s immersive, every ridge, every sediment band and crevasse connects to a bigger picture of climate change and how important changes in the Cryosphere are to the world’s climate.
From Ice to Insight: Why This Work Matters – And Why Iceland?
Glaciers build landsystems: interconnected assemblages of moraines, meltwater channels, ice-marginal lakes, debris bands, and outwash plains that record how climate, topography, and ice dynamics interact over time. By “reading” these systems together, rather than in isolation, we can trace the pathways of debris through the ice, identify the structural switches that trigger rapid retreat or surge-like pulses, and anticipate how hazards evolve as glaciers thin and reorganize. This multidisciplinary method turns field notes into forecasts: it helps us understand where new proglacial lakes may form, where push moraines might build, and how meltwater routing could change – knowledge that matters for communities, infrastructure, and nature.
Iceland provides an exceptional setting for studying temperate outlet glaciers because it combines three critical controls: a maritime climate, steep topography, and active volcanism. These factors produce rapid and measurable glacier responses to environmental forcing, making Iceland an ideal location for landsystem analysis and outlet glaciers such as Svínafellsjökull and Kvíárjökull exhibit structural reorganization on seasonal to decadal timescales. This high-resolution geomorphic and structural record allows direct testing of landsystem models under contemporary climate forcing. By integrating field mapping, sedimentological observations, and remote sensing, these Icelandic case studies inform predictive models of temperate glacier evolution, hazard development (e.g., proglacial lake formation, moraine instability), and sediment flux under accelerated warming.
As the sun dips behind Vatnajökull, I think about the path that led me here. My first real taste of that puzzle came in 2015, when I joined the British Geological Survey team on a field campaign as a volunteer field assistant, while studying for my MSc. I still remember stepping onto the foreland for the first time and seeing the sheer scale of the ice margin. That trip changed everything. It turned curiosity into commitment, and it set me on the path to a PhD exploring glacier structure and evolution in Iceland.
If you’re reading this and wondering if science could be your path, my advice is simple: follow the questions that excite you. Seek opportunities to get outside, to see the processes you study and as cheesy as it sounds, follow your dreams. Tomorrow will bring more crevasse work, more mapping, and maybe a few answers. For now, some rest, another busy field day awaits.
Ella Wood, PhD Student, School of Geography & Sustainable Development, university of St Andrews
Scotland has a long and proud history of glaciology and polar research, punching far beyond its weight in the international research community.
Modern glaciology plays a very different public role than it did a century ago, as polar and high mountain regions are central to conversations around climate change and social justice. The melt of the Antarctic and Greenlandic ice sheets has global implications through sea level rise and changes in mountain glaciers have cascading environmental, social, economic and political impacts. Polar and mountain regions are also critical in discussions of defence, resource extraction and sovereignty. We see this in Trump’s outlandish claims over Greenland and Russia and China eying up opportunities for resource extraction and shipping routes in the Arctic. Research into the cryosphere is more important than ever in our interconnected world, however the context and motivations differ significantly from our early polar heroes. Their legacy, while foundational, also reinforces a specific vision of science: one rooted in masculine ideals of conquest, isolation, and objectivity. We can see evidence of how such norms continue to influence glaciology, particularly through the lens of gender.
A survey by the British Antarctic Survey estimated that women make up 39% of polar researchers in the UK, but this falls significantly with career stage. Notably, Scotland is yet to have its first female glaciology professor. An academic paper published in 2016 sparked debate as it coined the term ‘feminist glaciology’, digging into the question of how gender has shaped glacier science. The paper highlighted how gender (and aspects of social identity including ethnicity, sexuality, education and social background) influence issues of power, justice and inequality that affect the way scientific knowledge is produced and whose voices are considered credible. It is not only about the opportunities offered to individuals but also how institutions, funding structures and research practices often have an implicitly gendered aspect. Even in natural science fields which are often considered ‘objective’, gender plays a role in research motivations and funding, which underpin the questions we ask and the way scientific findings and theory are adopted and implemented by others. Historically, there are many examples where the success of a scientist and the subsequent popularity and adoption of their work is tied to their reputation as an explorer. This interlinking
of scientific credibility and exploration is still common today. Many research funds reward expeditions with exploratory and scientific aims, blurring the line between these two elements. Expeditions to remote locations can have scientific value, however, we may question whether they are scientifically (or financially) the most effective places to conduct research. This intermingling of scientific and exploratory goals is amplified by the media, which picks up on stories of personal hardship in the pursuit of research. This legacy can result in the higher scientific valuation of ‘extreme’ research projects compared to lower stakes, community and policy orientated research.
It was only in 1996 that the British Antarctic Survey removed all gender-based fieldwork restrictions, contrary to the Sex Discrimination Act (1975), from which they were granted an exemption. When working in the field women can face additional practical challenges related to hygiene and safety, yet it is still relatively rare that gendered issues are openly discussed and integrated into project planning. Even after overcoming these obstacles, women are likely to face further scrutiny in the way their knowledge, expertise and research practices are received by colleagues, the media and local communities.
My own experience as a female PhD researcher working in Central Asia has highlighted some of the challenges that come with being a woman in a male-dominated team or research group. In addition to navigating practical concerns around safety and cultural differences in how women engage in fieldwork, I’ve had to reaffirm my physical, technical, and scientific credibility, sometimes making me question my own abilities and right to be there.
Today, amazing work is being done to increase diversity in polar research. Programmes such as Girls on Ice and the Scottish-based Polar Academy are engaging young people from diverse backgrounds with polar science. Yet, the promotion of gender equality and diversity must go beyond youth participation and needs to be embedded at every level. Whilst we see an increasing backlash against diversity programmes internationally, it is important that in Scotland we step up to this challenge. We need to continue to establish a forward-looking research culture that supports equity and enables scientists from different backgrounds to conduct world leading research.
Glaciology is for everyone. Rather than being driven by notions of endurance, risk-taking and heroism, we need to envision modern glaciology as grounded in teamwork, critical thinking and positivity in the face of global challenges.
David Sugden FRSGS, Emeritus Professor of Geography, University of Edinburgh
How much will the world warm in the next 50 years and what will be the effects in different places? The critically important answers to such questions depend on how quickly different global feedback mechanisms come into play and interact. At any one time the Earth’s environment depends on feedbacks between human activity and the atmosphere, oceans, land and biosphere. Different forms of feedback occur on different timescales. Some feedbacks such as the addition of CO2 to the atmosphere are quick to respond while others, such as the fortunes of the Greenland Ice Sheet will play out over centuries.
Global warming takes us back to James Croll, born near Perth in 1821. In the two decades between 1864 and 1885 Croll published over 90 articles and books on the Earth system and how it functions. He was the first to develop the astronomical theory of ice ages and the importance of Earth feedback processes. He showed how feedback responses amplified minor changes in insolation caused by variations in the Earth’s orbit around the sun and gave rise to a succession of ice ages and warm interglacial periods. Croll was highly respected scientifically, elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of London, and had regular letter correspondence with top scientists of the day, such as Lord Kelvin and Charles Darwin.
Croll had worked on reconstructing former Northern Hemisphere ice sheets where much greater thicknesses had been inferred and so he decided to take up the challenge and reconstruct the morphology and flow of the Antarctic ice sheet and its temperature characteristics. He assumed that the depth of icebergs was the thickness of the icesheet at its land margin and that, in order to flow, the surface of the icesheet had to increase in altitude inland. He used surface gradients of between 0.2 and 1 degree. The reconstruction suggested that the ice sheet was thickest at its centre near the South Pole and that thickness was controlled by ice dynamics rather than snowfall. Further, assuming an average snowfall of 2 inches per year (5 cm) over the ice sheet, the ice velocity at the edge would be 400-500 feet per year (120150 m). Croll then calculated the three main heat sources affecting ice temperature, namely the bed, the internal friction of ice flow and the atmosphere. The cold surface temperatures of the Antarctic ice sheet meant that much of the bed was below the freezing point.
“Croll published over 90 articles and books on the Earth system and how it functions.”
In an issue of The Geographer on how Scottish geographers are studying glaciers over the world it is worth recalling the pioneering paper in 1879 by James Croll on the Antarctic ice sheet. It shows the clarity of Croll’s approach. He looks critically at alternative explanations of field observations and then uses physical principles to create a reconstruction of the dynamics and thermal regimes of the ice sheet.
The vertical ice cliffs bounding the Ross Ice shelf in Antarctica had been known since 1841 when James Clark Ross observed that he might “with equal chance of success try to sail through the cliffs of Dover.” There were also numerous accounts from whalers and explorers of icebergs many miles across with cliffs up to 500 ft high (152 m) revealing horizontal layering that thinned from top to bottom. Allowing for flotation, such observations had led to a view among scientists that the maximum thickness of the ice sheet was 1400 feet (420 m), a value that the oceanographer, Sir Wyville Thompson, attributed to bottom melting at the base of the ice sheet.
It is important to recognise the novelty and insight of Croll’s paper published before anyone had landed on the Antarctic continent. There was doubt as to whether Antarctica was a continent, never mind bearing an ice sheet.
The greatest uncertainty of Croll’s reconstruction was ice thickness at the centre since this varied with assumed ice-surface gradients and ranged from 3 to 24 miles (5-38 km). Croll flagged this uncertainty and highlighted its importance since it determined the volume and gravitational attraction of the ice mass that currently draws up sea level around Antarctica. He showed how loss of the ice sheet would have a variable effect on sea level around the world. At the end of the 19th Century when polar explorers were prioritising the North Pole, Croll notes ruefully that it would be more scientifically valuable to go to the interior of Greenland and discover the surface gradients at the centre of an ice sheet.
The approach and conclusions of Croll’s ice-sheet model still stand. The key is that Croll looks at the problem from the point of view of the Earth system. He builds on key physical principles, examines interdisciplinary links and assesses the main feedback links involved. This is Earth system science at its best. James Croll is an inspiration for Geographers.
Holly McNair, Communications Officer, RSGS
Have you Always lived in Edinburgh?
I spent the first 21 years of my career at the University of Aberdeen and then moved down to Edinburgh in 1987 to be a professor of Geography. Why did you choose to holiday in Madagascar?
There are two main reasons – one is that my wife is a biologist from Sweden, and Madagascar is a wonderful place for a biologist because it’s been separate from the continent since mammals evolved, so the mammals are all different. But I also wanted to go because there’s quite a dispute in Antarctica about the landforms under the ice sheet. In West Antarctica you’ve got three mountain groups, and they are basically the same as Madagascar. I’ve been arguing for quite a long time that the flat tops of those mountains might be the same as the flat tops and plateaus you get in Madagascar, with the coastal plain and then a high plateau. So that was my excuse for going there.
Where did you interest in physical geography begin?
It all started at university, although I grew up in a family that liked walking in mountains. When I went to university, I got involved in expeditions to Iceland and to Greenland, and I loved it. I loved interpreting the landforms and trying to explain what was going on. There was an offer of a studentship in Oxford, so I decided to do the same sort of thing. At the end, when I’d finished, I was employed by the British Antarctic Survey, so I went down to the South Shetland Isles in Antarctica for a year, before returning to Aberdeen.
Is there a place you have visited that stood out for you personally?
channels. At the end of the summer down there, there were these channels going across one of the islands. Earlier in the season, we’d been on another island. It was flat and there were no channels – we realised there must have been an ice sheet to the north. It suddenly became clear that north of the South Shetland Islands there was a big flat platform, and during the Ice Age you got ice building up on there. That raised the question: why weren’t there any channels on the first island we went to? And since then, I’ve discovered that there were channels, but they were all full of snow. So, when we were walking across this flat top, we never realised there were channels underneath.
The broader significance was that we then realised this had happened throughout the sub-Antarctic South Georgia, the South Orkneys, other parts of the South Shetland Peninsula. When sea level was lower, the ice extended offshore and built up much more.
What motivates you to support young people to the extent that you clearly have?
“I’m stunned by how much the RSGS does on such a small base. I would like to see the RSGS able to play a bigger role.”
I think I do have a special place now, and that’s South Georgia. I’ve worked there three times. It’s basically a chunk of the Andes swept into the South Atlantic. You’ve got fantastic mountains behind, it’s warm compared to the rest of Antarctica, and you’ve got all this wildlife – the tussock grass, fur seals, penguins. But I’ve also enjoyed Patagonia. I like working with other people – it’s always been fun. Has there ever been a research trip you’ve been on that led to a discovery that changed the way you think about that place – or even geomorphology more broadly?
There were lots of big discoveries that made a big impact on me. One quite good example would be working in the South Shetland Islands when we were mapping meltwater
Research students are wonderful to work with. They’ve got bright minds, exciting topics, and just being able to interact with young people is wonderful. It’s been a real highlight of my career.
What would you like to pass on to future generations?
That you can make a difference. I think that’s the main thing. I’m reminded of a very famous quote: education should be a light on the mind and not a load on the mind. Curiosity is good. Let’s find out how the world works. That can only be a good thing.
Is there anything we could be doing better or focussing on?
I think it’s very important to be operating at school level with teachers. I’m stunned by how much the RSGS does on such a small base. I would like to see the RSGS able to play a bigger role. I think the role it plays is wonderful, and now it’s punching well above its weight. Long may it continue to do that.
What does geography mean to you?
Geography is a way of bringing curiosity about the world we live in. That’s what it means to me. I enjoy discovering how it all fits together. I’ve always liked looking at landscapes, looking at people, looking at buildings, and asking myself how it all works. I just find that fascinating.
Adam Garbo, PhD Student, University of Ottawa
In the summer of 2025, a research expedition aboard the Canadian Coast Guard icebreaker Amundsen sailed to the Queen Elizabeth Islands in the Canadian High Arctic. This was the first time the Amundsen had ventured to this remote region, where heavy sea ice has historically prevented ship access. For scientists on board, the voyage offered a rare chance to work directly in a part of the Arctic that has largely been studied from afar. I joined the expedition to collect new measurements of glacier thickness and to deploy tracking instruments on icebergs and ice islands, large pieces of ice that calve from glaciers and can drift for years through Arctic waters.
The Queen Elizabeth Islands contain some of the largest glacierised areas in the Canadian Arctic, yet they remain among the least studied. Persistent sea ice, challenging weather, and remoteness have long hindered research, leaving major gaps in basic information about glacier thickness and iceberg behaviour. As a result, we still lack a clear picture of how much ice is stored on land, how often icebergs are produced, and how ice released from glaciers evolves after calving.
“For scientists on board, the voyage offered a rare chance to work directly in a part of the Arctic that has largely been studied from afar.”
Understanding how glaciers are changing requires knowing not only where they are, but how thick they are. Thickness tells us how much ice is stored on land and how much may eventually be lost to the ocean, influencing both iceberg production and long-term sea-level rise. In much of the Canadian Arctic, particularly in the Queen Elizabeth Islands, this basic information is still limited, making new field measurements especially valuable.
My work focused on measuring glacier thickness using airborne ice-penetrating radar. This technique uses radio waves to determine ice thickness and reveal the shape of the land beneath it. During the expedition, a radar system suspended beneath a helicopter was flown along planned low-altitude flight paths across several remote glaciers. Flying close to the ice surface improves the quality of the measurements, but it also requires careful planning and suitable weather conditions. Many of the glaciers surveyed had not previously been measured in detail using radar, making these observations an important contribution to our understanding of the region.
Fieldwork in the High Arctic is logistically demanding and tightly constrained by weather and ice conditions. Helicopter operations are often impacted by fog, wind, or low clouds, and plans can change with little warning. This was made evident during one set of surveys, when the radar system was left on the glacier during refuelling and dense fog rolled in, surrounding the ship for several hours. With the equipment still on the ice, there was a real risk it could not be recovered. After waiting for conditions to improve, the ship
was repositioned outside the fog, which thankfully allowed us to return to the glacier and retrieve the system.
Alongside the glacier surveys, I also focused on icebergs and ice islands that break away from glaciers and ice shelves. Once this ice enters the ocean, it can drift for years or even decades, interacting with sea ice, ocean currents, and coastlines. To better understand this movement, I deployed Cryologger tracking beacons, compact, low-power instruments I designed to transmit the positions of drifting ice via satellite. These beacons send regular location updates, allowing icebergs and ice islands to be tracked over long periods and across large distances.
Cryologger deployments were carried out by helicopter flying from the Amundsen. We landed directly on icebergs and ice islands to install the instruments and to measure their thickness using a compact radar system. One deployment took place on a large tabular ice island approximately 2.5 kilometres long that had calved from the Milne Ice Shelf on northern Ellesmere Island in 2021. Standing on the ice gives an immediate sense of both its scale and its movement. Over the course of the installation alone, the ice island drifted a noticeable distance, a reminder that these are not fixed platforms but moving, evolving parts of the cryosphere. The data collected during this expedition will be used to improve understanding of both glaciers and icebergs in the Canadian Arctic. Glacier thickness measurements help build a clearer picture of how much ice is stored on land and how that ice may be released in the future. When combined with existing radar data from across the Canadian Arctic Archipelago, these new measurements contribute to a broader picture of glacier volume. Iceberg tracking data, in turn, provide insight into how ice islands move, how long they persist, and which pathways they follow after calving.
For me, the 2025 expedition was not just a unique opportunity but a chance to work in a region where a lack of direct field observations has long shaped what we know about glaciers in the Canadian Arctic. I feel fortunate to have taken part in this work, and in 2026 I will return to build on these measurements, as new opportunities emerge to continue studying a region where the ice still holds many unanswered questions.
Lokesh Jain, PhD Student, School of Geosciences, University
As the small propeller plane begins its final descent, I look out the window: the city’s small network of lights illuminates the early morning, sharp snow-covered mountains stretching back as far as the eye can see. Parts of the bay are completely frozen over, but I still see boats gliding along the calm waters. The lady sitting next to me points out a pair of lonely headlights trundling inland away from the city – an ATV driving along the newly-made track.
It is 7th November 2025, and I am landing in Sisimiut, Greenland’s second-largest city. I have already been in Greenland for two months working as an intern at Arctic Hub, the Greenlandic research secretariat based in Nuuk. Now, everything we have been working towards is about to begin: it is time for Greenland Science Week.
Greenland Science Week (GSW) is a science festival held every other year across the country. Its aims are to show the local population the diverse range of research carried out in Greenland and to help foster collaborations between researchers and organisations from across the world. At Arctic Hub, we are in charge of organising GSW for the very first time, and I am here in Sisimiut with my colleague Kulunnguaq to attend the local events over the next few days. And there is no time to waste. After a beautiful taxi ride under an orange-pink sunrise, we arrive at the joint campus of Arctic DTU (Technical University of Denmark) and KTI (Tech College Greenland) for a guided tour of their facilities. The highlight is exploring the Greenland School of Minerals and Petroleum – not only do we learn about how some of their students go on to build Sisimiut’s own infrastructure, but one of the workshops has been spookily decorated in preparation for a haunted house later this evening. Seeing a skeleton hanging off a skidoo is a welcome surprise.
In the evening we head to Taseralik, Sisimiut’s Cultural Centre. In the summer, small ducks slowly traverse the lake next to Taseralik, gently rippling the reflection of its black and yellow panelling; Kulunnguaq and I take turns sliding across the frozen water under a cold and cloudless night sky, the full moon lighting up the snow on the peak of the mountain Nasaasaaq just behind the lake.
Once inside, we attend a panel discussion on how research can work together with local businesses to strengthen innovation. Many Greenlandic entrepreneurs are in attendance, and it is clear that there is a strong will for more collaboration so that the positive influence of research can be more tangibly felt in Greenlandic society.
One such entrepreneur is Ulloriaq. He runs a sled dog food business and is currently working with researchers to explore how more sustainable dog food can be produced all year round. After a brief conversation, he kindly invites me and Kulunnguaq to meet his own sled dogs; early the next morning we cram ourselves into his truck and make our way out of the city to sled dog town. As soon as we arrive, the dogs know feeding time is here; they begin to bark and dance around, though those older than six months are tethered to a chain at least three metres long by law. After all, they are not pets – they are working dogs used by hunters in the winter. I timidly approach an adult dog sat patiently on top of a rock. He looks more wolf than dog, presiding over his clan with his back turned to the icy mountains, his weathered white
fur keeping him warm in the Arctic air. He eagerly devours his breakfast of leftover seal and fish before resuming surveillance of his territory. After fighting our way through a river of excited puppies, we clamber into the truck and head back to the city.
“Parts of the bay are completely frozen over, but I still see boats gliding along the calm waters.”
Leam Howe, PhD Student, School of Geosciences, University of Edinburgh
Introduction: The Language of Snow
In the mountainous regions of Japan, farmers have historically looked to the high peaks in spring for Yukigata (雪形) –”snow shapes.” Each year the melting snow would create repeating patterns – a horse, a butterfly, or an old man – that signal the date to sow your seeds. They are a natural calendar written on the landscape; a dialogue between the mountains and the people living below them.
Closer to home, the Welsh speak of esgyrn eira – ”snow bones.” It is a hauntingly poetic descriptor for those stubborn, late-lying drifts that linger in the gullies long after the green has returned to the valleys. They are the skeletal remains of winter, hinting at the structure of the season passed.
For centuries, Scotland had its own “snow bones”. Folklore and early travelogues spoke of the “eternal snows” of Braeriach and Ben Nevis. To the casual hillwalker, they were just patches of white. But to the geographer, they were a cryospheric link to the Little Ice Age (approx. 1650–1850 AD). Today, however, that link is broken. We are witnessing a regime shift in the Scottish uplands, where the perennial ice of the last three centuries is giving way to the transient, ephemeral snow of the future.
The Past: Ghosts of the Little Ice Age
For decades, the prevailing scientific consensus, championed by the late ecologist, Dr. Adam Watson, was that Scotland had been glacier-free for 11,000 years and that the “snow bones” were exactly that, lingering static remnants of the past. However, this view was challenged by a study published in 2013 in The Holocene. Martin Kirkbride and colleagues utilised cosmogenic 10Be dating to re-examine boulder ridges in Coire an Lochain and Garbh Choire Mòr. The findings provided evidence that small, slab-like glaciers likely regenerated in these high corries during the Little Ice Age.
Historical records indicate that the Sphinx melted completely only three times in the entire 20th century: 1933, 1959, and 1996. It was a rare, generational event. However, annual surveys published in Weather by Adam Watson, Iain Cameron and colleagues reveal a collapse in this durability. The timeline of the last 100 years of the Sphinx is outlined below and evidence supports that before 1933 snow had not melted here since the Little Ice Age. Now, The Sphinx has melted completely for five consecutive years: 2021, 2022, 2023, 2024, and 2025.
Could this represent a fundamental “regime shift” where summer ablation will systematically outpace winter accumulation and our bones will no longer last the year? I think not: inter-annual variability is too large. But I think it’s fair to say that the “eternal snows” are certainly a thing of the past.
If the Yukigata were the traditional predictors of the seasons, our modern equivalents are climate models – and their forecast is stark. We are looking at a future of corries empty of snow.
“For centuries, Scotland had its own ‘snow bones’. Folklore and early travelogues spoke of the ‘eternal snows’ of Braeriach and Ben Nevis.”
Climate projections using UKCP18 data suggest that, under high-emissions scenarios (RCP 8.5), snow cover duration in the Cairngorms will decline rapidly after 2050, potentially leading to “little to no snow” by the end of the century. This is not merely a shift in weather; it is a fundamental alteration of the Scottish landscape’s character. We are moving toward a “snow-free” future where the esgyrn eira do not just break – they fail to form altogether.
This recontextualizes our understanding of features like “The Sphinx” on Braeriach (see photo). It suggests that for much of modern history, these were not just snow patches, but “zombie glaciers” – regenerated glacierets surviving on a lifeline of wind-blown accumulation. They were the last holdouts of a colder era, protected by the steep, north-facing headwalls of the Cairngorm plateau.
The Present: The Fracture (2021–2024)
If the 18th century was the era of the glacieret, the 2020s are the era of their extinction. The most alarming signal is not just that the snow is melting, but the frequency with which it is disappearing.
The extinction of these features triggers a cascade across the landscape. Ecologically, we risk desynchronizing the food web: Dotterel rely on insect pulses from melting snowbeds, while Ptarmigan are left exposed when their white winter plumage meets a brown, snow-free hillside. Hydrologically, we lose a critical “cold reservoir” that buffers stream temperatures for Atlantic salmon during hot summers. The human cost is equally significant. Towns like Aviemore, built on the 1960s “ski dream,” face an economic pivot as the reliable winter vanishes. For those of us who climb and walk these hills, the change is noticeable. The consistent winter conditions that once defined the season are becoming harder to find, and the landscape we travel through is undeniably changing. We are watching a distinct chapter of Scottish mountaineering slowly fade.
In Japan, the Yukigata were trusted because they were consistent. In Scotland, our “snow bones” are becoming brittle. The disappearance of the Sphinx is not just the loss of a patch of white on a map; it is the final closing of the door on the Little Ice Age and the beginning of a new, warmer, and ecologically poorer chapter for Scotland’s mountains.
As we mark the International Year of Glaciers’ Preservation, our task is not just to mourn the ice we are losing, but to document it. We are the last generation who will see the bones of winter last the summer.
Citizen Science: Tracking the Vanishing Ice The study of Scotland’s snow patches relies heavily on citizen science. The “regime shift” we are witnessing has been reliably documented by authors like Iain Cameron and the contributors to the annual Weather reports. Want to get involved? If you are a hillwalker or climber, your observations are valuable data.
Join the Community: Visit the “Snow Patches in Scotland” Facebook group to see current reports and photos.
Submit Your Data: Have you spotted a late-lying patch? Consider posting on the facebook group or email me at leamhowe1@gmail. com. Time, date, and approximate size (length, width, or area with a GPS?) are really useful metrics for our research. Also knowing the last day of meltout is important, so if you fancy hunting down some snow patches as they melt away next summer please let us know.
Jo Woolf FRSGS, RSGS Writer-in-Residence
After four hours of climbing, the summit panorama that greeted Fanny Bullock Workman was the best she had ever seen. She wrote: “Unexplored Karakoram giants marshalled their forces in long white lines to the north; from our peak we looked down upon a new, immense, unexplored glacier.” In the far distance loomed the formidable shape of Mount Godwin-Austen – now known as K2 – while Nanga Parbat “floated like a god over a sea of supporting peaks on the horizon toward Kashmir.”
It had been a tricky ascent, the last part consisting of an icewall that rose at an angle of 60 degrees. Despite the altitude of well over 19,000 feet, Fanny was pleased that she had only a mild headache, although sudden exertion made her breathless. Her husband, Hunter, took some photographs of the summit party while they rested. “We buried our bottled cards in the snow,” wrote Fanny, “where doubtless they will, alas, never be found.”
Born in Massachusetts in 1859, into a society that had yet to grant women the right to vote, Fanny grew up listening to her father, who was the State Governor, declaring that all members of society should be treated equally. She shared his views, and despised the rules that restricted women’s behaviour. Long days spent walking and climbing in the White Mountains offered a means of escape that became her life’s calling. Luckily for Fanny, marriage wasn’t a gilded cage: her husband, William Hunter Workman, shared her love of adventure and was prepared to travel the world with her. The couple moved to Germany, and their ever-more-daring expeditions took them to the Alps and then into Asia. Their first view of the Himalayas came as a revelation, and Fanny began to envisage a large-scale expedition with local people hired as porters, interpreters and cooks. After a season spent climbing in the vicinity of Kangchenjunga, she turned her attention to the Karakoram. Starting in Srinagar, they would cross the high-altitude pass of Skoro La and then follow the Biafo glacier, one of the largest glaciers in the Karakoram, for some thirty miles to the Hispar Pass.
the main Himalayan peaks had been calculated, but Fanny knew that many glaciers in the western Karakoram remained unexplored. By 1899 the Great Trigonometrical Survey had evolved into the Survey of India, and Fanny began a long correspondence with its Superintendent, Sir Sidney Gerald Burrard. While intending to make some important first ascents during their three-month expedition, the Workmans also aimed to map the troughs, ridges, crevasses and ice-falls of the Biafo glacier.
“Their first view of the Himalayas came as a revelation, and Fanny began to envisage a large-scale expedition”
Although Fanny and Hunter were skilled climbers, they knew that in the Himalayas they required the unparalleled expertise of Swiss guides who, at that time, were the most experienced mountaineers in the world. Fanny recruited Matthias Zurbriggen, who had guided the pioneering climber Sir Martin Conway in this area a few years previously. In late June and early July, the party that snaked its way from Srinagar and through the high villages of Leh and Askole comprised Fanny, Hunter and Zurbriggen, 55 local people and a number of yaks, laden with three months’ worth of supplies.
On reaching the tip of the Biafo glacier, they climbed up onto the ice via its lateral moraine. Initially they found that its surface was concealed under a thick coating of mud, sand and lumps of rock, some the size of a small house. Soon the going got more difficult, with fields of giant, honeycombed séracs that frustrated attempts to navigate through them. Steps had to be cut into ice-pinnacles and the sides of crevasses, with Zurbriggen often standing astride a gap to pass heavy loads from one side to another. Two live sheep, which were destined for camp suppers, caused some alarm when one fell into a crevasse, but Zurbriggen was lowered down on a rope and retrieved it.
Beginning in the early 1800s, the Great Trigonometrical Survey of India had succeeded in mapping the Indian subcontinent over the course of about 70 years. The heights of
As the glacier’s surface became smoother, the views that opened up were immense and majestic. On either side, near-perpendicular granite walls rose for thousands of feet to serrated towers, snowbound and inaccessible. Every few miles a tributary valley, itself rimmed by great peaks, opened out from the main glacier. Fanny was intrigued by the features beneath her feet: streams of crystal-clear water ran over the
surface before plunging suddenly into a crevasse. Elsewhere, she was puzzled by holes in the ice, about the size of a human head. She wrote: “Into one of these… a pebble was dropped, and was heard to resound for several seconds until lost in the depths.”
Campsites had to be found every evening, but often the crevasses were so large that just getting off the glacier and onto solid ground was a serious problem. Firewood, a precious commodity consisting largely of willow twigs, was collected for camp fires. Towards the end of July the party was encamped on a grassy, overhanging platform from which they looked down at the Biafo glacier, some 200 feet below. Above them soared the Ogre (Baintha Brakk), a 23,901-foot giant that was only scaled in 1977 by Sir Chris Bonington and Doug Scott. “On this airy perch,” wrote Fanny, “we passed three nights and two days.”
While Fanny and Hunter did not attempt to climb the Ogre, they did climb several other, slightly lesser peaks. From a mountain that they called Mount Bullock Workman, Fanny gazed down upon the “new, immense, unexplored glacier” which she later described in a paper for the Scottish Geographical Magazine. “Its lower part,” she wrote, “is indicated on the Indian Survey map, but not the upper part, which we were the first to photograph.” They also examined Snow Lake, a glacial basin named by Conway at the head of the Biafo and Hispar glaciers, which contained kneedeep snow lying on top of dangerously crevassed ice. Here Fanny stumbled and fell up to her shoulders, but was quickly rescued by her fellow climbers.
Using a barometer and a hypsometer, the Workmans measured barometric pressure and the boiling point of water, which they converted to altitude. Courageously tackling a 1,200-foot wall of ice, Fanny and Zurbriggen made what is likely to be the first ascent of Khosar Gang, now estimated at 19,816 feet; Hunter had been forced to retreat due to altitude sickness. Fanny was fortunate that her husband was a physician, and she was also fortunate in that she suffered only mildly from the effects of altitude. “I had reached the highest point ever attained by a lady climber,’ she observed, ‘and one cannot help feeling some satisfaction in that.” Fanny was determined that the work conducted by herself and Hunter should be of use to map-makers and future explorers. While their altitude measurements were not always reliable, and the names that they gave to mountains often paid no heed to their original ones, their observations
Cathryn J Prince, Queen of the Mountaineers (2019)
Fanny Bullock Workman FRSGS, ‘Ascent of the Biafo glacier and Hispar pass: Two pioneer ascents in the Karakoram’, Scottish Geographical Magazine, (1899)
Fanny Bullock Workman FRSGS, ‘Amid the Snows of Baltistan’, Scottish Geographical Magazine, (1901)
Fanny Bullock Workman, In the Ice World of Himalaya (1900)
Fanny Bullock Workman, Two Summers in the Ice-wilds of Eastern Karakoram (1916)
represent a valuable account of climbing in this remote and unforgiving environment. The atmosphere during their expeditions was often strained: Fanny’s strict discipline was applied not just to herself but to the porters in her charge, to whom she showed little sympathy when they complained about the weather or urged her to turn back. Her own personal story, of the tragic loss of an infant son, reveals grief that was well hidden but deeply felt.
Over the next 13 years, the Workmans returned to the Himalayas many times. In 1912, having spent weeks surveying the Siachen glacier in the eastern Karakoram, Fanny stood on the Silver Throne plateau at a height of around 21,000 feet and unrolled a banner that read ‘VOTES FOR WOMEN.’ She explained that she made this gesture “[not] because I wish in any way to thrust myself forward, but solely that in the accomplishments of women, now and in the future, it should be known to them
Christina MacDonald MacQueen Edited by Miles Kerr-Peterson & Dr Michelle Craig (Origin, 2025)
Christina MacDonald MacQueen (1884–1959) was born on St Kilda and grew up there at the close of the 19th century. Yearning for the bright modern world beyond the island, she was the first woman to leave of her
John Goodlad (Shetland Times Ltd, 2025)
Food from the Sea looks at the challenges and opportunities facing the global seafood industry. With its low carbon footprint and proven health benefits, the seafood industry should have a great future. Instead, it faces a multitude of problems, mainly related to an increasingly negative image that is gaining traction in the media and wider society. John Goodlad tells this complicated and contradictory story through the lives of the people who produce food from the sea; the fishers and farmers who provide the fish and shellfish that we eat.
Mia Bennett and Klaus Dodds (Yale University Press, 2025)
A vital account of the state of the Arctic todayemphasising the twin dangers of climate change and geopolitical competition. Mia Bennett and Klaus Dodds examine the state of the Arctic today, showing how the region is becoming a space of experimentation for everything from Indigenous governance to subsea technologies. Growing geopolitical competition is accompanying environmental disruption.
Countries including Russia, China, and the United States are investing in the Arctic and consolidating their interests in strategic access, resource exploitation, and alliance-building.
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own accord in 1909, settling in Glasgow. During the crisis that led to the islands’ evacuations in 1929-30, she wrote a series of passionate articles about her childhood and the history of the islands. These writings about St Kilda offer a personal and uniquely female perspective on the island’s story and its imminent abandonment.
Hubert Sagnières (Flammarion, 2025) Travel to the North Pole remains the ultimate challenge for intrepid adventurers; this tome takes readers along on ten daring nineteenth century expeditions through firsthand accounts and striking archival images. Sagnières showcases ten major international arctic expeditions carried out between 1818 and 1876, tracing the journeys of courageous explorers from the United States, England, Scotland, Ireland, and France. These nautical pioneers braved icy conditions and the vast unknown in search of the coveted northern passage.
Vicky Allan & Jackie Kemp (Black & White Publishing, 2025)
Take Me to the River is an anthology not just of wild swimming writing, but of stories of how a jump into deep waters can change us. Open water swimming plays a pivotal role in many great narratives, taking us on an immersive journey, from Homer’s Odyssey to contemporary poetry and memoirs. There is adventure here and aquatic playfulness. Grief and anguish, too; heartbreaks displaced and healed by watery spaces. Love and desire spark between characters at the edge of the water, as does freedom from constraint and the glorious energy of possibility and hope.
Dawn Hollis (The History Press, 2024)
Mountains Before Mountaineering reveals the way mountains inspired curiosity and fascination and how they were enjoyed in sixteenth- and seventeenthcentury Europe. It gives voice to the early modern travellers who climbed peaks and passes with fear and delight; to the ‘real mountaineers’ who lived and died upon the mountain slopes; and to the scientists who used mountains to try to understand the origins of the world. This book invites you on a journey through the mountains, long before Everest was ‘discovered’ as the highest mountain in the world or before the first recorded ascent of Mont Blanc.
