Frozen in Time by Valerio Viperino

This work started as a hobby data exploration done in the 3d software Houdini about a single glacier (the Careser) that I have a personal connection with – I climbed the Mt Cevedale several years ago and witnessed the beauty of the glacier first-hand. As such, I was curious to know more about how it evolved since my last visit there.

I slowly realised that the dataset had more to tell than just the story of a single glacier: the visualisation later expanded to be a more generative, code-driven piece that explores the collective history of all the glaciers monitored by the Copernicus project.

The main visualisation shows glacier area changes from 1975 to 2019 as gathered by the Copernicus Satellite. The data illustrates gradual increases or decreases in glacier area over the years. Inclines to the right represent decreases in surfaces area, whilst inclines to the left represent increases.

The other visualisations give more detailed insight into area changes over the years, as well as an overview of the absolute area of each individual glacier. Each point drawn represents 1m² of area of the glacier in a specific year.