Chasing Ice: glacial melting in the Arctic - in pictures

An Extreme Ice Survey (EIS) team member provides scale in a massive landscape of crevasses on the Svínafellsjökull Glacier in Iceland Photograph: James Balog/Extreme Ice

EIS field technician Adam LeWinter on an iceberg in Columbia Bay, Alaska Photograph: James Balog/Extreme Ice

In Disko Bay, Greenland, a 20-storey iceberg has broken away from the Greenland Ice Sheet to float into the North Atlantic, raising sea levels Photograph: James Balog/Extreme Ice

Adam LeWinter ice-climbing in Survey Canyon, Greenland Photograph: James Balog/Extreme Ice

Adam LeWinter on the rim of Birthday Canyon on the Greenland Ice Sheet. The black deposit in the bottom of channel is cryoconite. Birthday Canyon is approximately 150 feet deep Photograph: James Balog/Extreme Ice Survey

An iceberg melts where surf meets sand on the beach near Jökulsárlón, Iceland Photograph: James Balog/Extreme Ice Survey

Chasing Ice Director Jeff Orlowski films in Survey Canyon, Greenland Photograph: James Balog/Extreme Ice Survey

EIS founder and director James Balog hangs off a cliff by Columbia Glacier, Alaska, to install a time-lapse camera Photograph: Tad Pfeffer/Extreme Ice Survey

James Balog at Jökulsárlón, Iceland Photograph: Svavar J—natansson/Extreme Ice Survey