THAW By Timo Lieber

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Appreciations towards Timo Lieber for providing the following description:

THAW不仅仅是一系列摄影作品，它还是摄影艺术与科学的碰撞。摄影师曾到访北极冰川，与在那里研究的科学家们一同工作，也被那里的自然环境和而深深震撼。这便是摄影师在THAW系列中呈现的。THAW捕捉了格陵兰岛急速增长的蓝湖现象，它们是世界上最难踏入的区域之一。在这些最原始的生态环境中，人可以真切的察觉到气候变化对环境的改变。

格林兰冰盖并不是世界上最寒冷荒凉的地方，它是一个天然的储水池，抵消了地球海岸上7米高的洪水。在过去的二十年里，这个储水池已经从一个稳定的环境中脱离出来，并以每年380,000,000,000吨水量的速度减少着。随着北极气温持续上升，冰盖逐渐融化并流入海洋。但这又是一个更加危险的过程：大量形成的蓝湖以比以往更加迅猛的态势涌入内陆。蓝湖迅速通过冰盖排出，润湿了河床，进而促使冰块更加快速的流向海洋，融化再化为冰川。我们现在才明白，这些变化都是相互影响的，冰盖正加速融化着，而全球海平面也正以每年1.2毫米的速度增长着。

THAW is more than just a photography project – it is a collaboration between photography and science. I visited the Arctic polar ice cap, working alongside several scientists who study it, and was overwhelmed by the scale of the landscape and the enormity of associated problems. All of which I brought together in THAW. THAW highlights the rapidly growing number of blue lakes and rivers that form on the Greenland ice cap – one of the most inaccessible areas on earth. Here, in the pristine landscape, stripped to the bare minimum of colours and shapes, the dramatic impact of climate change is more obvious than anywhere else in the world.

The Greenland ice sheet is not just a stark and frigid wilderness perched at the top of the globe; it is a vast frozen reservoir of fresh water that offsets seven metres of coastal flooding around the planet. In the past two decades, that reservoir has shifted from a steady state in balance with its climate, to one in which it is now losing an estimated 380,000,000,000 tonnes of ice annually. As Arctic temperatures continue to rise, the ice sheet loses out, primarily, through increased surface melt and runoff into the ocean. But this drives a second, more insidious process: vast azure melt lakes form across its surface and are now spreading further inland than ever before. These lakes rapidly drain through the ice sheet, lubricating its bed, causing the ice to flow faster towards the ocean where it melts and calves icebergs. We now understand that these processes work in tandem, that the ice sheet is being depleted at an accelerating rate, thereby raising global sea-levels by up to 1.2 mm each year.

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