Remarkable images capture the diversity of Earth’s ice formations

Incredibly huge, impossible. Very exposed hillsides. Billion-year-old rocks behind a lonely iceberg. And the view from inside a glacier tunnel.

These four beautiful and moving images come from a new book, Our frozen planet By Michael Hambrey and Jürg Alean. It plans to celebrate the cryosphere – the collective name that describes the world’s ice – in all its formsglaciers and ice sheets permafrost and snow cover.

The main image shows ice forming around a waterfall near Giswil in Switzerland. Ice forms growing from above have merged with ice formations from below to form a giant ice column.

Pictured above is Bryce Canyon in Utah. The direction of a slope has a significant effect on how snow is distributed in mountainous areas. Almost all of the snow has melted on the south side of this ridge, but a significant cover remains in the shadow on the left side, to the north.

The image above shows Nordvestfjord, a National Park in Northeast Greenland, where some of the world’s oldest metamorphic rocks form the backdrop of an iceberg reflected in the deep waters of the fjord.

It’s Vadret from Switzerland in Morteratsch the glacier (Pictured above), the meltwater has made a tunnel through the snow and ice. The photo was taken from inside the tunnel in winter, when there was no melt water.