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Argentina’s Perito Moreno Glacier is one of the few that are not retreating because of global warming. But for how much longer?

Aqqaluk Lynge, President of the Inuit Circumpolar Council, Greenland, says, ‘Climate change in the Arctic is not just an environmental issue with unwelcome economic consequences. It is a matter of livelihood, food, and individual and cultural survival. The Arctic is not wilderness or a frontier, it is our home and homeland.’

Further south, in the semi-frozen areas of Alaska and Siberia, thawing of the once-permanently frozen ground is turning solid foundations for buildings and roads into soft bog. Houses are sinking as the land subsides.

Warmer weather is also causing problems for Europe’s snowy regions and the people who live and work there. Alpine glaciers are in retreat and snow is arriving later and melting earlier in the year. Alpine glaciers shrank by 10 per cent in 2003 alone. Germany’s last glacier, the Zugspitze, which provides drinking water for the Rhine Valley, is melting so rapidly that people in the area have tried to protect it from the sun by covering it with canvas.