モンブラン氷河の１００年前と現在、英大が比較画像を作成　氷河の融解あらわに

【パリＡＦＰ＝時事】1919年に撮影されたヨーロッパアルプス最高峰モンブランの氷河の航空写真を用いて、同じ場所の100年後の画像作成に、英ダンディー大学の研究チームが成功した。100年前の写真と比較することで、温暖化による氷河の急激な減少があらわになっている。（写真は仏南東部シャモニー近郊モンブランのボッソン氷河の1919年撮影の写真（左）と2019年8月撮影の写真）
　モンブランで消えゆく氷河については、これまでも数多くの研究が行われてきたが、ダンディー大のチームは温暖化がもたらした惨状をはっきり目に見える形で示そうと、１９１９年にスイス人の写真家兼パイロットのバルター・ミッテルホルツァーが撮影したモンブラン氷河の航空写真３枚と同じ位置の１００年後の画像を作成しようと試みた。
　チームは、最新の地理位置情報システムと３Ｄ視覚技術を駆使し、綿密な分析によってミッテルホルツァーが上空から氷河を撮影した位置を特定。画像の作成に成功した。その比較効果はてきめんだ。２０世紀初頭には山の大部分を覆っていた壮大に輝く氷河が、１００年後には山肌が見えるほど溶解が進んでいるのが一目瞭然だ。
　ダンディー大のキーラン・デクスター氏は「このような変化を目にするのは分かっていた」とした上で、「上空からだと今、起きていることの大きさが把握できる。驚異的であると同時に胸が痛む」と付け加えた。【翻訳編集ＡＦＰＢＢＮｅｗｓ】
〔ＡＦＰ＝時事〕（2019/10/28-08:43）

In 1919 a pioneering aviator took iconic photos of the Mont Blanc glaciers. A century later, a team of experts has recreated the images to highlight the drastic ice melt caused by rising temperatures.
Despite an overwhelming body of scientific evidence tracking humanity's contribution to climate change, it is often difficult to grasp the enormity of a phenomenon that unfolds so gradually.
Numerous studies have been made of the vanishing glaciers surrounding Europe's tallest mountain, but the University of Dundee experts decided to go one better in an attempt to demonstrate in stark visual terms the damage wrought by global warming.
They painstakingly set about recreating three iconic images captured 100 years ago by Walter Mittelholzer, a Swiss pilot and photographer, of the Sea of Ice, Bossons and Argentiere glaciers.
Using the latest geolocation and 3D visualisation techniques, they were able to pinpoint the precise patch of sky from which Mittelholzer snapped the photos for maximum impact.
One of the driving forces behind this work is to try to make the narrative the scientists understand very well understood by people who don't have this specialist knowledge and can recognise these undeniable changes, the University of Dundee's Kieran Dexter told AFP.
The result is a startling contrast between the sprawling, glistening glaciers of the early 20th century and swathes of dull, dried earth today.
The levels of melt on the Sea of Ice glacier, France's largest, are particularly noticeable.
It's jaw-dropping to see those changes, but it was not a surprise for us, Dexter said.
- 'Breathtaking and heartbreaking' -
We knew the kind of changes we were expected to see but from that height you can get the scale of what is happening. It's still breathtaking and heartbreaking.
The UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change last month released a landmark assessment of Earth's frozen spaces, known as the cryosphere.
It found that under current rates of warming the glaciers of Europe and Scandinavia could melt by as much as 80 percent by the end of the century.
As well as destabilising the mountainsides to which they have clung for millennia, vanishing glaciers are predicted to have a severe impact on food production -- reliant on seasonal meltwater -- and on tourism.
Between 1970 and 2015 the Argentiere glacier, northeast of the Sea of Ice, lost 20 percent of its surface.
The Sea of Ice and the Bossons glaciers lost 10 and seven percent respectively, according to Antoine Rabatel, a glaciologist at the Institute of Geosciences and Environment in Grenoble, France.
For him, the photography project serves as a kind of public awareness tool.
They let you really visualise things, and that's so important for the wider public as not everyone can go and see what's happening on the ground, he said.
The team from the University of Dundee say they plan a similar visualisation project for glaciers in Iceland.