A HARD-HITTING collection of pictures by a South Lakes photographer, capturing climate change in action, has gained celebrity endorsement.

Images From a Warming Planet by Ambleside photographer Ashley Cooper has been praised by actress Emma Thompson.

Ms Thompson, star of many popular films including Love Actually and Saving Mr Banks, is also an outspoken campaigner on climate change and environmental issues.

After reading the book she wrote to Mr Cooper: “Sometimes pictures are more powerful than any words and at the beginning of a year that presages some disastrous decisions in the US that will impact upon us all, this book has become essential reading.”

The book, which is comprised of more than 500 images, documents the impact of climate change around the world.

Mr Cooper was motivated to undertake the project after carrying out a photo shoot in Alaska in 2004.

He said: "It was just so obvious that things were changing so rapidly in the Arctic, even then."

By taking thousands of photographs over 13 years in several locations, Mr Cooper has been able to illustrate the damaging effects of global warming.

The book, published last year thanks to a crowfunding campaign, reveals the shocking effects of climate change on every continent, from the Inuit communities of the Arctic to the Coral Atoll islands of the Pacific Ocean, and shows the damage caused by dependence on fossil fuels: flooding, glacial erosion and deforestation.

Climate change is a more pertinent issue than ever but many still refuse to accept it as a serious problem.

US president Donald Trump has even been reported to have called it a "hoax."

But Mr Cooper hopes that people will be unable to turn a blind eye once faced with cold, hard photgraphic evidence.

Mr Cooper added: "I hope it acts as a wake-up call for people to realise how much the threat of climate change poses.

"Unless we do something about it very rapidly, that does not bode well for the planet."

Images From a Warming Planet has also been praised by Liberal Democrat leader Tim Farron, MP for Westmorland and Lonsdale, who said: “This book is far more than just a collection of impressive photographs.

"It documents a massively important and concerning phenomenon that will affect us all. "These images vividly show the effect which climate change is having on our planet, and serves as a wake-up call for us all to act before it is too late.”

Leading environmentalist Jonathan Porritt also wrote in the book’s foreword: “This is a book about change, about the way the climate is already changing, and the way in which it will change even more dramatically in the future.

"About changes in peoples’ lives as they seek to make sense of weather systems that seem to have slipped those reassuring bounds of normality and predictability.

"About changes in our understanding of what’s going on around us, in our world views, in our orientation both to our current reality and to the future.”

Copies of the book can be bought online here

Read More:

North Pole mission to provide more accurate forecasts

Transport Secretary warns against Diesel