As glaciers melt, a writer considers what stories can do that data cannot

The last ice ageReturn of the sunSnow lineUtuqaqPufflingThe ice buildersMammothSlingshots of the oceanicThe last ice merchantNamesakeThe Icelandic writer and environmental activist Andri Snær Magnason traces both his love of storytelling and his concern for the natural world back to his grandparents. Amateur explorers, they volunteered on scientific expeditions to the Vatnajökull ice cap, even setting off the day after their wedding in 1956. Their stories, and the footage filmed by Magnason’s grandfather, shaped Magnason’s imagination and, later, his sense of urgency about climate change.In this film by Emergence Magazine, the California-based filmmakers Adam Loften and Emmanuel Vaughan-Lee follow Magnason as he returns to Vatnajökull with his son, retracing his grandparents’ journey. Weaving together the family’s archival footage with present-day images of Magnason and his son at the ice cap, the film makes stark the dramatic changes that have taken place over the past seven decades. Throughout, the film shows how stories move us in a way that abstract ideas and data cannot: by connecting environmental loss to the people we hold close – past, present and future – they humanise our concern for the planet and raise the stakes of what we stand to lose.Directors: Adam Loften, Emmanuel Vaughan-LeeProducer: Devin TellatinWebsite: Emergence MagazinevideoEcology and environmental sciencesExperience winter’s end and spring’s dawn in northern Greenland4 minutesvideoNature and landscapeA father and son’s search for the line where the snow starts12 minutesvideoEarth science and climate‘Ice has a memory’ – an Inuit poem contemplates scientific exploration of Greenland28 minutesvideoChildhood and adolescenceThe unique fellowship between teens and young puffins on a remote Icelandic island20 minutesvideoEngineeringCan monumental ‘ice stupas’ help remote Himalayan villages survive?15 minutesvideoEcology and environmental sciencesBring back the mammoth to fight global warming? It’s not as crazy as it sounds26 minutesvideoHistory of technologyThe voyages of Ancient Pacific mariners echo in modern space exploration2 minutesvideoHistory of technologyA man struggles to carry on a dying trade – harvesting ice from a glacier14 minutesvideoEarth science and climateA biologist on the sorrows of documenting the Great Salt Lake’s collapse6 minutes