Franz Josef Glacier receeding over time

Whilst reading an article about glaciers receeding in New Zealand, I thought this photo looked strangely familiar. Comparing the snout of the Franz Josef glacier in 1871, when the snout is at the bottom of the valley and in 2016 when the snout has receeded far up the slope

The reason it was strangely familiar being that I didn't remember the snout of the glacier to be so far up the hillside as in the photo of 2016. So I dug around in my albums on Flickr and indeed, the snout had receeded a worrying amount in just under 20 years. So I did some amateur environmental change analysis and added some date lines to my photo: The Franz Josef glacier marked by date lines for 1871, 1998 and 2016 to show far up the hill the glacier has receeded in 1871

This may or may not be due to human made climate change, but this does show the changing climate on a personal level to me. Nature is not always as you might remember it, but changing all the time, for better or worse.

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