A reverse image search revealed to me that there are a hell of a lot of copies of this image around the internet, but I can’t seem to find any papers that provide background. I’m going to have to look again later, but if there’s any other internet sleuths out there interested in figuring out the origins of these photos with reputable explainers, I would love to know more about this.
I’m always afraid of things like this that seem to confirm my biases without associated information to back it…
There’s a couple similar photos from 2022 posted to Reddit by the same photographer (meaning the same person posted these two, not that it’s necessarily the same person who posted the one above):
I just did reverse image search and found this article from 2002
The Guardian article nailed it, thanks!
It doesn’t cite exactly where they got the Greenpeace photo from, but I found it here: https://media.greenpeace.org/archive/Climate-Impact-Documentation-in-Norway--Svalbard-27MZIF4WNED.html
Climate Impact Documentation in Norway, Svalbard Greenpeace documentation showing that glacier “Blomstrandbreen” has retreated nearly 2 km since 1928, with an accelerated rate of 35 metres lost per year since 1960 and even higher in the past decade. In the image, view of climate campaigner Truls Gulowsen on a speed boat going to a mine in Longyearbyen.
Unique identifier: GP0STSCL6 Shoot date: 03/08/2002 Locations: Norway, Scandinavia, Svalbard Credit line: © Greenpeace / Christian Åslund
A bit more from the Guardian article:
Greenpeace activists visited the glacier last weekend on the Rainbow Warrior taking pictures from the same locations to highlight the effects of global warming, which the group says is a threat to the future of the planet.
The Blomstrandbreen glacier has retreated by one and a quarter miles since 1928, according to Greenpeace. It was shrinking by 115ft a year in the 1960s, a rate which has risen.
Recent studies carried out by US researchers and reported in Science last month said that 85% of the glaciers they examined had lost vast portions of their mass in the last 40 years.
Keith Echelmayer of the University of Alaska at Fairbanks, who has carried out research into Alaska’s ice streams and checked glacier thickness, said: “Most glaciers have thinned several hundred feet at low elevation in the last 40 years and about 60 feet at higher elevations.”
