Icebergs and Glaciers by Drone

For a first upload to AirVuz, brand-new contributor guido_dronelab.es brings us this stunning drone video from Antarctica.  The content creator is the Head Manager of Dronelab, an aerial photography specialist in Barcelona, Spain whose client list includes the likes of AirVuz, BBC, Audi, and other prestigious names.  The video, which was filmed in connection with a scientific expedition to the continent, highlights the earth's dependence on Antarctica's most precious resource: roughly three-fourths of the planet's freshwater supply.  This video was a DVOY finalist in 2021. 

Prepare to be blown away by these stunning drone views from the massive North Atlantic island of Greenland, compliments of former DVOW Winner haussmannvisuals.  The video was filmed over the area around the iceberg-filled Ilulissat Icefjord, a large fjord system located on the island's western coast, just south of the fjord's namesake town (and the Danish-controlled island's third-largest settlement).   Due to the ecological importance of the fjord and the Jakobshavn Glacier that feeds it, it's part of a UNESCO World Heritage site.  

For a first upload to AirVuz, brand-new contributor brendanbeale brings us this amazing drone video of Iceland's Jökulsárlón glacial lagoon, one of the natural treasures of this North Atlantic island nation.  The lagoon is located in the southeastern part of the country, on the edge of the Vatnajökull National Park.  Jökulsárlón has been the filming locations for many feature movies, including the James Bond films A View to a Kill (1985) and Die Another Day (2002), Batman Returns (2005), and Lara Croft: Tomb Raider (2001).  

Nunavut is the newest Canadian province, having been carved out of the Northwest Territories in 1999.  It is a vast Arctic land, lightly occupied and bearing a greater resemblance to Greenland or Antarctica than it does to other Canadian provinces.  Award-winning aerial videographer Florian Ledeaux shot this stunning video of a polar bear walking across the icebergs floating in the Arctic Sea.  The video powerfully illustrates the fragility of the world's eco-system to continued global warming trends.  

Contributor Kirillumrikhin traveled from Russia to the Union Glacier Camp in Antarctica, the only part of the seventh continent which is open to tourists.  This magical video, which captures the beauty of this polar land, was chosen as a winner of the AirVuz Drone Video of the Week Contest in April, 2018.  For a bird's eye view of the world's most mysterious and least-explored continent, this video is hard to beat! This cinematic piece was also chosen as a Finalist for the second annual Drone Video Awards in the  Nature & Landscapes category. 

Filmed with a DJI Phantom 4, contributor AirDroner shares his fascinating views of Konkordiaplatz, a UNESCO World Heritage natural site in central Switzerland.  This area is the junction of four large glaciers coming down from the Aletschfirn, the Jungfraufirn, the Ewigschneefäld and the Grüneggfirn.   The most recognized feature of Konkordia is the famous "hut" which is maintained by the Swiss Alpine Club.  The junction area sits at an altitude of about 2.7k meters, or just under 9k ft.  

The creative potential of drones to tell powerful stories is astounding.  In this video, the acclaimed Italian composer and pianist Ludovico Einaudi is filmed playing a piano on an iceberg broken off from the Wahlenbergbreen, a glacier on the coast of Svalbard, in the northern reaches of Norway.  The music video was created to build awareness of global warming and its visible consequences in the Arctic, and was selected as a finalist for the 2017 AirVuz Drone Video Awards in the Originality category.  

The Alps Mountains are home to some of the world's most epic hiking spots as well as some of the most famous glaciers on the European continent.  The temperatures, altitude, and rock formations of this mountain system make them conducive to forming these huge ice sheets that have helped to shape so much of the range.  Top contributor and drone pilot Scientik hiked his way into these mountains with his drone, and was able to capture some astounding bird's eye views of these icy natural wonders.

The Pia Glacier runs along the Chilean side of the strait on the Beagle Channel, a strait which runs parallel to the Strait of Magellan in Patagonia (the name for the southern "cone" of South America).  In this stunning drone video, top contributor Fabio Knoll flew his drone over this magnificent ice formation, giving us a magnificent bird's eye view of the glacier's amazing texture.  The glaciers of Patagonia are some of the most spectacular in the world; a number are the world's biggest outside of the polar ice caps.  

Like most outdoor activities, Kayaking depends on reasonable weather to be enjoyable.  Norway doesn't typically come to mind when one thinks of kayaking spots, but one of the surprising things about northern Norway is that the climate is relatively temperate given the very northern latitudes here.  In this video, contributor Zdeno Dvorak uses a drone to show us the joy of paddling a kayak in the area around Svartisen Glaciers in Norway's Nordland County, on the edge of the Arctic Circle.  

Aialik Glacier drains the Harding Icefield in the Kenai Peninsula Borough of southern Alaska.  The great frozen formation is characterized by intricate repeating patterns which develop in the mighty ice sheet as it slowly slides into Aialik Bay.  Top contributor CH Drone used a drone to fly over this myterious looking ice and snow formation.  The result is an incredible bird's eye view of one of Alaska's most distinguishing physical features, and truly a sight to behold from an aerial perspective.

For drone's eye views of massive glaciers in the Andes, look no further than this epic aerial video by top contributor and pilot Jturner.  He took a five day trek on Ausangate in Peru, whose peak sits 6.4k meters above sea level (almost 21k ft.).  Using a DJI Mavic Pro drone, he was able to capture some incredible footage of the glaciers which cover this mountain near Cusco, one of the highest peaks in the Western Hemisphere.  Ausangate is the highest peak in the masif known as the Cordillera Vilcanota.

Top contributor Dronealps created this spectacular video by flying a drone through the Bossons Glacier in the French Alps.  The glacier was formed from the snows of Mt. Blanc, and it flows about 7.5 km (around 4 mi) past the iconic Aiguille du Midi mountain, ending its long course around the equally iconic town of Chamonix.   This is a flying maneuver not for the faint of heart, as you'll see from the video one wrong turn and the drone would be completely irrecoverable from the vast glacial field.  

Cruise ships have become a popular way to explore Alaska, especially the glaciers which lie along its Pacific coastline.  In this video, contributor and pilot Exclusive Aerials flew a drone off of a cruise ship to catch some epic aerial views of Hubbard Glacier.  Hubbard is one of Alaska's most well known glacial formations.  It originates high in some of Alaska's highest mountains in the eastern part of the state and neighboring Yukon, Canada.  The glacier runs a total length of around 122 km or about 75 mi.  

Contributor and pilot The World as Playground used a DJI Mavic Pro drone to create this marvelous aerial video of one of the world's most unusual glaciers.  It's called the Perito Moreno glacier, and it's located on the Argentina side of Patagonia near the southern tip of South America.  The glacier is one of the most popular tourist attractions in Patagonia, and it's also of interest to scientists: whereas most of the world's glaciers are shrinking, this one is slowly but steadily growing in size.  

The North Atlantic island nation of Iceland is known as much as anything for its glaciers and icebergs.  Much of the island covered by a series of ice caps, which are continually "calving" off giant icebergs which then float into open ocean, often through fjords.  It's this frozen wonderland which you will see from a spectacular aerial perspective in this excellent drone video by top AirVuz contributor and pilot oculusfilms.  This video was picked as a Finalist for the AirVuz Drone Video of the Week contest in May, 2021.

Contributor and drone extraordinaire, Florian Ledoux, does his part to aid in nature conservation by capturing intimate and unseen scenes of marine life to share with the rest of the world.  It is clear in his drone masterpiece, "I Am Fragile", that he approaches his wild subjects like polar bears, narwhals, and walruses with the utmost care and with great consideration for their surroundings. This moving piece is a nominee in the Drones for Good category in the AirVuz Drone Video Awards.

Virtually all of Greenland's towns are located on its western coastline.  One of these is Ilulissat.  With a population of about 4,500, it's the largest town in the Avannaata region, which covers the northern part of the island's western coast.  In this stunning drone video by inva+sla, you'll get a bird's eye view of the extensive iceberg population which inhabit the waters off of the coast near the town.  The icebergs are produced by Greenland's massive ice sheet, the world's largest outside of the poles. 

If you didn't think that mountain biking and glaciers went together then you need to check out this DVOW Finalist video by contributor Jake Sloan.  Using a DJI Mavic Pro 2 supplemented with ground camera footage, he recorded an epic ride using fat tire mountain bikes over Alaska's Portage Glacier.  The glacier lies on the Kenai Peninsula, which juts out from the state's southern coastline near Anchorage.  The footage of three friends racing along what looks like the world's biggest ice skating rink is not to be missed. 

Contributor used DJI Phantom 4 and Mavic Pro drones, combined with ground camera footage, to create this video of an epic helicopter ski trip to one of Europe's most famous glaciers.  The Gorner Glacier runs down the west side of the Monte Rosa masif near Zermatt, Switzerland.  With a surface area of nearly 60 square km (about 20 square mi.), it's the second largest glacier in the Alps.  Monte Rosa, which is part of the Pennine Alps, is the second highest peak in the Alps after Mt. Blanc in France.  

Check out this stunning 4k drone video of the largest glacier in the Alps Mountains, compliments of contributor Fantas10.  It's called the Aletsch Glacier, and it's situated in Switzerland's Valais Canton in the Bernese Alps subrange.  The 23 km (around 14 mi.) long glacier takes up an astounding volume of over 15 cubic kilometers (around 3.7 cu. mi.).   Formed by the convergence of four smaller glaciers around Konkordia, the Alsetsch eventually flows into the Rhone River, of which Lake Geneva is part.  

Contributor Hector Espinosa created this epic video of two well known spots in Patagonia, the region in the cone of South America which is shared by Argentina and Chile.  The first area shown is that around Los Glaciares National Park near Calafate, in the southwestern corner of Argentina.   The park is home to a portion of the Perito Moreno Glacier, one of the region's top attractions.  The second part of the video is from the nearby Torres del Paine National Park in Chile, another haven for glacier-lovers.

Former DVOW Winner Julien Hulin brings us this magnificent drone video from the French Alps, which was created to illustrate the effects of global warming on the glaciers of the Alps.  With their relatively small size, these glaciers are extremely sensitive to the ongoing rise in global temperatures.  The expected disappearance of at least 80% of their aggregate mass will mark the end of an important freshwater storage mechanism, and will forever disrupt the appearance of some of the world's most beautiful alpine landscapes.   

With the final season of the HBO hit "Game of Thrones" having aired this year, just about everyone has been feeling inspired to create something dynamic in homage to the awarding-winning show,  and that includes cinematic first person view (FPV) drone king Gab707. This mountain surfing flight, set to the score for “Dragonstone,” is a gorgeous, dragon-inspired flight by the AirVūz and DRL pilot. In it, he runs straight through a glacier in the Alps Mountains!    This video made the FPV Pilots to Watch list in April, 2019.

Award-winning contributor Florian Ledoux has made a specialty of using drones to show the spectacular beauty of the earth's polar extremities. In this magnificent piece, he takes us to Antarctica on an expedition to explore the coasts of the seventh continent.  The magnificent footage will take you over the rapidly-retreating icecap and the glaciers it spawns, as well as some of the region's unique wildlife. You'll also see some great views of some kayaking and even skiing in this last frontier. This video was a DVOW finalist in August, 2019. 

Award-winning contributor, nature photographer, and drone pilot Florian Ledoux created this stunning aerial video of the vast iceberg fields of East Greenland.  Greenland holds particular interest for him due to its potential damage from global warming: if the vast Greenland ice sheet were to melt at once, it would raise the global sea level by over 7 meters (24 ft.) and wash away many of the world's coastal cities.  Ride along for this fascinating view of a spot in the cross-hairs of global warming.  

Check out this stunning 4k drone video of a well-known glacier in Western Norway, compliments of contributor and pilot Allan Crawford.  It's the Nigard Glacier (Nigardsbreen), and it's located in Sogn og Fjordane County.  It currently covers just under 50 square km (just under 20 square mi.) Nigardsbreen is an arm of the Jostedal Glacier (Jostedalsbreen), Europe's largest.  The glacier is named after a farm that was enveloped by the glacier during a period of expansion in the 18th century.  

Contributor Wrenee, aka the Queen of the Dronie, gives us her trademark pull-out shot from Disko Island off the western coast of Greenland.  Disko is the second-largest island of Greenland after the island of Greenland itself, the world's largest.  Disko, which is situated in Baffin Bay, is actually itself one of the world's 100 largest islands.  Disko has a population of about 1,000, making it the second most populated island of Greenland, which is governed as a semi-autonomous region of Denmark.

Here is a short but stunning aerial view of a famous glacier in the French Alps, compliments of MountainRunner.  It's the Mer de Glace, and it's situated on the north side of the masif of Mont Blanc.  The glacier is about 7.5 km long (a bit under 5 mi.) and about 200 meters deep (around 660 ft.).  Counting its "tributaries", it's the largest glacier in France and the second-largest in the entire Alps system.  Its (steadily rising) bottom point now sits at an altitude of about 1.5k meters (around 4.9k ft.).  

This drone video will strike a chord with you right off the bat. Accomplished pilot sfdrones opens with a spectacular, top-down shot of a mother whale and her calf as they travel through the waters around Greenland. His aerial piece of the island nation moves on to capture shots of the many glaciers and icebergs surrounding Greenland, more top-down shots of breeching whales, plus plenty of shots of the sun setting behind the ice, adding exquisite color to the scene. This video was a DVOW finalist in November 2019.

Top contributor and DVOW nominee Luke Maximo Bell created this epic drone video record of a trip to the earth's last frontier - Antarctica. Shot over the course of an eight day trip using a DJI Mavic Pro 2 drone, the video does a fantastic job of showcasing the spectacular natural beauty of the earth's seventh continent.  Watch it for some amazing aerial views of this gigantic glacier-covered land mass, which covers an area of about 14 million square kilometers or around 5.5 million square miles.  

Award-winning contributor Florian Ledoux used some of his best drone footage from earth's polar regions to put together this outstanding piece which won DVOW in February 2020. He skillfully uses the backdrop of shrinking glaciers and melting icebergs to remind us how these eco-systems - which hold the vast majority of the earth's freshwater - are to global climate change. The video features jaw-dropping footage from Greenland, Antarctica, the Canadian province of Nunavut, the Svalbard Islands of Northern Norway, and Iceland.

Check out this amazing 4k drone video from the Ilulissat Icefjord of western Greenland, compliments of contributor and pilot AnneSofie.  Running west from the Greenland Ice Sheet, the Ilulissat is fed by the Jakobshavn Glacier, considered one of the most productive in the Northern Hemisphere.  The icebergs which are calved off and float into the fjord can be enormous - up to 1k meters tall or about 3.3k ft.  The largest are too tall for the relatively shallow sea and can be stuck on the bottom for many years before floating free.

The Argentière Glacier is one of the most famous in the Alps Mountains system.  Part of the Mont Blanc Masif (a grouping of mountains which itself is part of the Graian Alps subrange), the glacier runs perpendicular to the Chamonix Valley, home to some of France's most famous ski resorts.  The glacier is now about 9 km long (about 6 mi.), having shrunken considerably over the last century.  Get an aerial glimpse of the magnificent ice sheet in this fantastic drone video by AirVuz contributor and pilot Alan3.

Check out this fantastic drone video of a glacier in eastern Switzerland, compliments of new AirVuz contributor and pilot Birds Eye Perspective_YT.  It's called Vorab Glacier, and it's located in the Glarus Alps, near the boundary between the cantons of Glarus and Grissons (Graubünden) in the east-central (and German-speaking) part of the country.  The glacier lies on the east side of its namesake mountain.  The mountain is part of the Glarus Alps, a sub-chain of the larger Alps Mountains system.  

Top AirVuz contributor and drone pilot Uglefisk brings us this fantastic aerial video of a hike into a well-known Norwegian glacier complex.  It's called the Sulitjelmaisen, and it's located north of the Arctic Circle in Nordland County, with a portion overlying the border with Sweden.  The glacier, which has been retreating in recent years, covers an area of about 24 square km or around 9 square mi.  Altitude wise, its runs between a bit over 800 meters above sea level (around 2.7k ft.) and about 1.7k meters (around 5.5k ft.).

Take in these stunning aerial views of Iceland's largest ice cap, compliments of top AirVuz contributor FreD.  The Vatnajökull Glacier covers a large portion of southeastern Iceland, accounting for about a twelfth of the island's overall land area.  Depending on definition, it's either the largest or second-largest ice cap in Europe.  Its average thickness is almost a quarter mile (1.25k ft. or about 380 m) and overlies numerous volcanoes.  It appeared in the opening sequence of the 1985 James Bond film, View to a Kill.  

Glaciers and icebergs are some of the world's largest natural wonders and drone pilots have been traveling to the ends of the earth to capture them from the sky. AirVuz created this video compilation of the best glacier and iceberg drone footage, including (1) Ilulissat icefjord in Greenland, a massive group of icebergs that have calved off the massive Greenland ice sheet; (2) polar bears and other wildlife roaming the arctic icebergs in Northern Canada; and (3) the Jokulsarlon Glacial Lagoon in Iceland.

Known for his nature and wildlife photography, Florian Ledoux chats with Tyler in this episode of The Drone Dish. Most of his work takes him to Arctic locations like Greenland and Canada's Federal Territories where he has captured epic aerials of polar bears, narwhals, and gigantic icebergs.  One of his aerial photos from the Arctic was featured in the seminal Time magazine special report entitled "The Drone Age", and his video "I am Fragile" was selected as a finalist in the second Drone Video Awards.