Overview

The Glacier Photograph Collection is an online, searchable collection of photographs, mostly in the Rocky Mountains, the Pacific Northwest, Alaska, and Greenland. Photographs were taken from the air and ground. The dates of the photographs range from the 1800s to the present day. As of October 2007, more than 4,600 glacier photographs are online. These photographs constitute an important historical record, as well as a data collection of interest to those studying the response of glaciers to climate change.

Search the Glacier Photograph Collection

You can search by glacier name, location, date, photographer, and more. You can view photographs online, and download high-resolution photographs.

Documentation

The documentation for the Glacier Photograph Collection provides background information on the origins of the photographs, how the photographs were acquired and scanned, the use of the search interface, and more.

Special Collections

The Glacier Photograph Collection also includes interesting subsets of photographs, highlighted as Special Collections.

• The Repeat Photography of Glaciers special collection displays photographs of the same glacier, taken from the same vantage point and at the same time of year, but taken many years apart. These photographs can show evidence of glacier and climate changes over time.
• The National Park Service (NPS) Glacier Survey Reports special collection highlights glacier photographs taken from the original reports. Included are reports from Rocky Mountain National Park produced between 1932 and 1952. Links to the complete PDF files of the original reports are also provided here.
• The DAHLI IGY Glacier Photographs are from Alaskan glacier surveys led by William O. Field during the International Geophysical Year.

Acknowledgments

The NSIDC Glacier Photograph Collection is an ongoing effort, in partnership with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Climate Database Modernization Program and the National Geophysical Data Center, to digitize photographs and other materials and to make them available online.