The team supplements the time-lapse record by occasionally repeating shots at fixed locations in Iceland, Bolivia, the Canadian province of British Columbia and the French and Swiss Alps.

Collected images are being used for scientific evidence and as part of a global outreach campaign aimed at educating the public about the effects of climate change.

Nature photojournalist James Balog founded the Extreme Ice Survey in 2007 after spending much of the previous two years photographing receding glaciers for National Geographic[4] and The New Yorker.

Each camera system weighs 125-150 pounds or more and had to be secured with anchors and guy wires against winds up to 150 mph, as well as against temperatures as low as -40 °F, blizzards, landslides, torrential rain and avalanches.

By capturing images in diverse locations throughout the Northern Hemisphere over several years, the EIS can provide a more complete picture of the effect of global warming across different geographic regions than previous ground-based, time-lapse studies.