“I think when you’re sitting in a middle-class environment and it’s a nice day and the sun’s come up or has gone down, it’s easy to become complacent about the larger forces at work in our climate system and the impacts those forces have,” Hughes said.

Hughes said the confronting images published in 2022 may be a response to the IPCC26 report and were important for raising awareness.

The images contrast with the positive note struck with the animation published for Earth Day 2021, which the company said was designed to “encourage everyone to find one small act they can do to restore our Earth”. Forni, one of Italy’s largest valley glaciers, has retreated 800 metres within the past 30 years and 1.2 miles (2km) over the past century. What has been a boon for archaeologists is also a symptom of the catastrophic threat caused by climate change. More recently the summer of 2017-2018 brought temperatures 3C warmer than average across New Zealand, shrinking some glaciers so much they all but disappeared.Įlsewhere artefacts long-entombed in the Italian Alps are being revealed as the ice melts, leading to the discovery of equipment left behind by soldiers camped out on the peaks during the first world war and a 5,300-year-old crime scene when the mummified body of Ötzi was found by hikers. The National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research (Niwa) found that between 1977 to 2014, a third of the permanent snow and ice was lost from the Southern Alps – a dramatic decline that began accelerating rapidly in the last 15 years.

Doodle for google 2022