Climate Change

New Photo Exhibit Shows Impact Of Global Warming

BOSTON (WBZ) ― Boston's Museum of Science has dubbed April "Earth Month" and in celebration of our planet, a new exhibit on climate change opened to the public Friday.

The new exhibit is called "Double Exposure" and it captures the retreat of glaciers from Alaska to the Swiss Alps by contrasting identical aerial photographs taken decades apart.

70-percent of the earth's fresh water is frozen in ice in glaciers like the one photographed in 1938 by Brad Washburn. He was the director of Boston's Museum of Science for decades. The late Washburn was also an avid photographer.

"His aim was obviously not global warming but to photograph climbing sites," said aerial photographer David Arnold.

Like his famous image of 6 climbers on a Swiss peak.

"Brad had no idea when he was shooting these that these would all get a second life," Arnold said.

Inspired by Washburn's images, Arnold used his old pilot logs and set out to recapture the same frozen scenes decades later.

"We might fly 3 hours in a single engine airplane to find one glacier and i had no idea what we were going to find," Arnold said.

What he uncovered is startling.

The Hugh Miller Glacier in Alaska shot by Washburn in 1940 is entirely gone in Arnold's new picture shot more than 60 years later.

The global warming signs showed up again and again.

The Shoop glacier in Alaska shot by Washburn in 1938 is also drastically different than Arnold's picture taken in the same month in 2007.

"It's retreated six miles...six miles!...since when brad photographed it," said Arnold.

According to Arnold, the exhibit was designed to alarm, educate and ultimately inspire action.

"We tend to forget that there are solutions out there...you can turn this around," said Arnold.

This amazing climate exhibit is now open to the public, but it is just one of the offerings during "Earth Month." To plan a trip to the museum, visit www.mos.org

(© MMVIII, CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved.)