Ice Obit
Eulogies for the world's vanishing glaciers — before they become footnotes.
Glacier retreat intelligence — individual glacier profiles with satellite before/after imagery, mass balance scorecards, death-watch timelines, and narrative obituaries for glaciers that have already disappeared. Data-driven, visually stunning, emotionally resonant.
Niche Explored
Glacier retreat tracking, glacier obituaries, ice mass loss intelligence — data-driven eulogies for the world’s vanishing glaciers with satellite before/after comparisons, mass balance charts, and narrative profiles.
Existing Competition
- From a Glacier’s Perspective (glacierchange.blog) — One-man blog by Mauri Pelto (RIP 2022, continued by others). Manual posts, academic tone, deeply respected but sporadic updates. No design, no automation, no newsletter. Gap: zero visual polish, no consumer-facing translation, no automated pipeline.
- icemelt.eu — Simple satellite viewer showing glacier retreat. No written content, no analysis, no stories. Pure tool, not a content channel.
- WGMS (wgms.ch) — Scientific data portal. Raw databases, academic publications. No consumer content at all.
- DarkSky/climate news outlets — Cover glaciers occasionally as part of broader climate stories. No dedicated glacier-specific content channel.
- National Geographic, BBC — Occasional glacier features. Beautiful but infrequent (maybe 2-3 major glacier stories/year). No ongoing tracking.
Key gap: Nobody is doing automated, story-driven, beautifully designed glacier intelligence at consumer level. The data exists, the interest exists, but it’s either academic databases or occasional mainstream features.
Data Sources Found
- WGMS Fluctuations of Glaciers Database — https://wgms.ch/data_order/ — Free download, CSV format. Mass balance data for 130+ glaciers, length change data for hundreds. Updated annually (latest: Feb 2026). DOI: 10.5904/wgms-fog-2026-02-10
- Randolph Glacier Inventory 7.0 (GLIMS/NSIDC) — https://nsidc.org/data/nsidc-0770 — 215,000+ glacier outlines, shapefiles. Free. DOI: 10.5067/F6JMOVY5NAVZ
- NASA GRACE-FO Data — https://grace.jpl.nasa.gov/data/ — Monthly ice mass loss grids. Free via NASA Earthdata. Interactive browser + bulk download. Measures gravitational mass changes → ice loss.
- Copernicus Sentinel-2 Imagery — https://dataspace.copernicus.eu/ — Free 10m resolution optical satellite images, 5-day revisit cycle. Before/after glacier comparisons. Open Hub API for programmatic access.
- UZH Global Glacier Casualty List — https://www.geo.uzh.ch/ — Academic research cataloging which glaciers have disappeared and which are next. Published Aug 2024.
- USGS Repeat Photography — Historical glacier photos from USGS archives, some with modern comparison shots. Particularly strong for North American glaciers (Glacier National Park).
- NSIDC (National Snow & Ice Data Center) — https://nsidc.org/ — Multiple datasets: sea ice extent, glacier area, snow cover. All free.
- Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S) — https://climate.copernicus.eu/ — Glacier monitoring indicators, European glaciers, ERA5 temperature data for context.
- GloGEM (Global Glacier Evolution Model) — Published projection datasets for future glacier loss under different emission scenarios.
- World Glacier Monitoring Service Annual Reports — Published PDFs with narrative summaries. Can be parsed for context.
SEO Analysis
- Keywords: “glacier retreat” (medium difficulty, steady search volume), “glacier disappearing” (lower difficulty, growing), “glacier national park glaciers melting” (high volume, medium difficulty), “before and after glacier photos” (low competition, high visual intent), “glacier mass balance” (low volume, very low competition), “glacier obituary” (near-zero competition — own this!), “which glaciers are disappearing” (growing, low-medium competition)
- Long-tail: “how much has [glacier name] melted”, “[country] glacier retreat 2026”, “glaciers disappearing timeline”, “glaciers before and after satellite”
- Image SEO: Before/after satellite images rank extremely well in Google Images
- Featured snippet opportunity: Structured data about individual glaciers
Communities
- r/glaciology (~5K but passionate), r/climate (~400K), r/earthporn (~25M, glacier content goes viral), r/geology (~1M)
- Twitter/X: Active glaciology community, #GlacierRetreat, #GlacierChange
- Mountain climbing/hiking communities (affected by glacier retreat)
- Iceland, Switzerland, Nepal, Patagonia tourism communities
- Educational: teachers looking for climate change teaching materials
- Photography communities: before/after satellite imagery is extremely shareable
Image/Graphic Feasibility
Excellent. This is one of the most visual niches possible:
- Sentinel-2 satellite before/after comparisons (auto-downloadable, free)
- Mass balance line charts (easy to auto-generate)
- Glacier area change maps (GIS data → SVG maps)
- “Glacier card” profiles with stats, like trading cards
- AI-generated artistic renderings of glaciers (for mood/header images)
- Heatmap overlays showing temperature anomalies vs glacier locations
- Timeline animations (can be auto-generated from multi-year Sentinel data)
Sources
- https://wgms.ch/datasets/
- https://nsidc.org/data/nsidc-0770
- https://grace.jpl.nasa.gov/data/
- https://dataspace.copernicus.eu/
- https://glacierchange.blog/
- https://icemelt.eu/
- https://www.geo.uzh.ch/en/news/2024/global-glacier-casualty-list.html
- https://sentinels.copernicus.eu/web/sentinel/videos/glacier-monitoring-with-copernicus-sentinel-2
- https://www.nature.com/articles/s41597-025-05246-8
- https://phys.org/news/2025-05-nepal-tribute-glacier.html
- https://www.icimod.org/press-release/requiem-for-a-glacier-tribute-held-in-nepal-for-one-of-the-hindu-kush-himalayas-most-studied-rivers-of-ice/