Ice Rivers: A Story of Glaciers, Wilderness and Humanity - Softcover

Wadham, Jemma

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0141994142 ISBN 13: 9780141994147

Publisher: Penguin, 2022

Synopsis

Longlisted for the Wainwright Prize

Shortlisted for the Richard Jeffries Award

The story of one woman's passion for glaciers

As one of the world's leading glaciologists, Professor Jemma Wadham has devoted her career to the glaciers that cover one-tenth of the Earth's land surface. Today, however, these 'ice rivers' are in peril. High up in the Alps, Andes and Himalaya, once-indomitable glaciers are retreating; in Antarctica, meanwhile, thinning ice sheets are releasing meltwater to sensitive marine foodwebs, and may be unlocking vast quantities of methane stored deep beneath them. The potential consequences for humanity are almost unfathomable.

Jemma's first encounter with a glacier, as a student, sparked her love of these icy landscapes. There is nowhere on Earth she feels more alive. Whether abseiling down crevasses, skidooing across frozen fjords, exploring ice caverns, or dodging polar bears - for a glaciologist, it's all in a day's work.

Prompted by an illness that took her to the brink of death and back, in Ice Rivers Jemma recalls twenty-five years of expeditions around the globe, revealing why the glaciers mean so much to her - and what they should mean to us. As she guides us from the Alps to the Andes, the importance of the ice to crucial ecosystems and human livelihoods becomes clear - our lives are entwined with these coldest places on the planet. This is a memoir like no other: an eye-witness account by a top scientist at the frontline of the climate crisis, and an impassioned love letter to the glaciers that are her obsession.

About this title

About the Author

Jemma Wadham is Professor of Glaciology at UiT the Arctic University of Norway/Norwegian Polar Institute and University of Bristol. She has led more than twenty-five expeditions to glaciers around the world, including to Greenland, Antarctica, Svalbard, Chilean Patagonia, the Peruvian Andes and the Himalaya, and has won several prestigious national awards for her research, including a Philip Leverhulme Prize and Royal Society Wolfson Merit Award. She is best known as a pioneer in the field of understanding glacier-hosted life and the impacts of glaciers on our global carbon cycle. Ice Rivers is the first book she has written for a general readership.

Edition details

• Publisher: Penguin
• Publication date: 2022
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0141994142
• ISBN 13: 9780141994147
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 240