Stunning images capturing the diversity of Earth’s ice layers

An incredibly huge icicle. An exposed mountain slope. Billion-year-old rocks behind the only iceberg. The view from inside the glacier tunnel.

These four beautiful and moving images are from a new book. our frozen planet Written by Michael Hambley and Jurg Allean. The event aims to celebrate the cryosphere, the collective noun that describes all forms of the world’s ice, from glaciers and ice sheets to permafrost and snowpack.

The main image shows ice forming around a waterfall near Giswil, Switzerland. The icicles extending from above fuse with the ice appearing from below, creating a huge icicle.

The photo above is Bryce Canyon in Utah. The direction of the slope has a large effect on the distribution of snow in mountainous areas. Almost all the snow has melted on the south-facing slopes of this ridge, but there is still quite a bit of snow left on the shady north-facing left side.

The image above shows Nordvestfjord in Northeast Greenland National Park, where some of the world’s oldest metamorphic rocks form the background of icebergs reflected in the deep fjord water.

At Switzerland’s Vadret da Morteratsch glacier (pictured above), meltwater creates tunnels through the snow and ice. The photo was taken from inside the tunnel during the winter, when water from melting snow was not flowing.