Earth from Space: Glacier Bay, Alaska

Click on the image below to explore it in its full 10 m resolution.

Covering over 13 000 sq km of rugged, snow-capped mountains, freshwater lakes, glaciers and deep fjords, Glacier Bay National Park and Preserve is one of the highlights of Alaska’s Inside Passage. As marine waters make up almost one-fifth of the park, Glacier Bay is rich with marine life, including humpback whales, orcas and sea otters. It’s also home to a large population of bears, moose, wolves and mountain goats.

The bay contains some of the world’s most impressive glaciers that descend from the ice-covered St. Elias Range in the east and the Fairweather Range in the west, with a few notable tidewater glaciers extending all the way to the sea.

John Hopkins Glacier, visible in the far left of the image, is the largest tidewater glacier in the region. Muir Glacier, formerly the most famous of the tidewater glaciers, once rose around 80 m above water and was nearly 3 km wide but has now shrunk and receded and no longer reaches the sea.

Glacier Bay is just one of the many areas suffering from the effects of global warming. The bay is expected to become warmer and drier over the next century, with widespread effects including the further shrinking glaciers, reduced sea ice and shoreline erosion.

Monitoring glaciers is often a challenge considering their sheer size, remoteness and rugged terrain they occupy. Satellites, including ESA’s CryoSat mission, with its elite spaceborne sensor – the radar altimeter – allows for the mapping of glaciers in fine detail. In a study published last year in the Cryosphere, scientists utilised data from the CryoSat mission to show how much ice had been lost from mountain glaciers in the Gulf of Alaska.

Today marks the opening of the ‘Earth’s Memory - glaciers witnesses to the climate crisis’ exhibition, that follows the scientific and photographic journey of glaciers around the world, premiering the results of the ‘On the trail of the glaciers’ project directed by Italian photographer Fabiano Ventura. The exhibition, which is being held in the Forte di Bard Museum, Aosta Valley, Italy, offers its visitors the opportunity to witness the effects of global warming through the power of both photography and ESA satellite imagery.

The exhibition focuses on the world’s largest mountain glaciers with 90 photographic comparisons displayed alongside scientific data collected during the team’s expedition to the world’s largest mountain glaciers. It runs until 18 November 2022 and includes images such as the one featured on this week’s Earth from Space programme. More information on the exhibition, which is part of a scientific collaboration between ESA and is sponsored by UNESCO, can be found here. 

This image is also featured on the Earth from Space video programme.