20090902 Icecap photo shows 'mother nature in tears'

clipped from www.telegraph.co.uk Marine photographer and environmental lecturer Michael Nolan captured the pictures while on an annual voyage to observe the largest icecap in Norway Austfonna on July 16. He said the image looked just like mother nature in tears, "as if she was crying about our inability to reduce global warming". 'Tears' in the natural sculpture were created by a waterfall of glacial water falling from one of the face's 'eyes'. A crying face is revealed in an ice cap located on Nordaustlandet in the Svalbard archipelago in Norway "The geometry of the ice cap is changing. The fronts are retreating, the lower parts are getting thinner, with a thinning rate of about three feet-per-year while the interior of the ice cap is thickening with about 1.6 feet-per-year," he said. "The ice cap is losing about 1.6 cubic miles of ice every year."