LOS ANGELES, CA (Catholic Online) - Compiled from material taken while filmmaker and environmental photographer James Balog was on assignment in the Arctic for National Geographic, "Chasing Ice" is intended to demonstrate how climate change has been impacting ice mass in the Arctic. The National Snow and Ice Data Center has reported that Arctic ice shrank to record lows.

The sights and sounds featured in the documentary which can be seen in select theaters now are breathtaking. Whatever one thinks of global warming - hysterical hoax or sobering reality, one researcher described the spectacle as akin to "Manhattan breaking apart in front of your eyes."

The filmmaking crew waited weeks to capture footage like this. The final result was 7.4 cubic kilometers of ice breaking from the Ilulissat glacier in Greenland.

The documentary's synopsis states that Balog had to battle technology that hadn't been tested in such subzero conditions -- and came to realize that the attendant danger may have very well cost him his life.

"It's not the nicest environment for technology," Balog says in the trailer.

Balog and his team installed cameras in Iceland, Greenland, Alaska, and Montana and set them on timers to take pictures of the glaciers every hour as long as daylight was available. After a difficult first season, in which camera systems broke down, they installed new customized computer chips designed to keep the cameras humming under the most extreme and difficult meteorological conditions. The resulting footage, expertly assembled using time-lapse photography, shows remarkable imagery.

The film was directed and produced by Jeff Orlowski and has already been showcased at film festivals and won several awards.

Glaciers are the "canary" in the global climate change mine, Balog says. Balog posits that at the rate they are melting all across the northern regions, by the middle of our century, Montana's "Glacier National Park will need a new name . "Glacier-less National Park."