Chilling images reveal melting ice worlds

These striking images highlight Earth’s vanishing ice and the fight to save it. A staggering two-thirds of glaciers may disappear by the end of the century, threatening ecosystems and global water supplies. The images took some of the top prizes in the Walk of Water competition, run by UNESCO and Onewater. UNESCO has designated 2025 as the International Year of Glacier Preservation.

Julia Roger-Veyer received second place in the European category for her atmospheric shots of the Mer de Glace, France’s largest glacier, at Chamonix. The image above was shot from within a moulin, a huge hole carved into the glacier by meltwater, while the photo below peers inside a cave created by glacial retreat. Roger-Veyer climbs and photographs the Mer de Glace each autumn. Each year, the glacier retreats roughly 40 metres. In an announcement about her win, she said she expects she will “probably be a helpless witness” to its disappearance.

Michele Lapini captured first prize in the Europe category for his shot documenting the effort to save Presena Glacier in northern Italy (below). Vital to the alpine ecosystem, the glacier’s surface area decreased from 68 hectares to 41 between 1993 and 2003, according to Lapini.

In 2008, conservationists began spreading textile sheets over the glacier each summer to prevent melt. The photo shows a worker unhooking sheets during autumn before the first snow. The effort may have reduced ice melt by two-thirds, but cannot pause ice loss. As Lapini writes, “climate change cannot be mitigated through localized quick fixes alone”.

The contest’s global prize is sponsored by MPB, its regional Asia prize is sponsored by Asian Development Bank, and its regional European prize by the city of Burghausen.