After hearing that the glaciers of the Rocky Mountains are rapidly vanishing, financial consultant Garrett Fisher took a novel course of action – he flew a light aircraft, built in 1949, low and alone over the mountains in order to photograph them.

Fisher spent much of his summer in 2015 flying over places such as Yellowstone, Glacier National Park and Grand Teton National Park, taking stunning pictures of retreating glaciers for a new book.

Fisher said the enormity of the loss was apparent from his plane, where he took in whole ecosystems such as the Wind River Range in Wyoming, which contains several major rivers that provide water for a large surrounding area.

Wind River Range in Wyoming contains several major rivers that provide water for a large surrounding area. Photograph: Garrett Fisher

“I’m completely resigned that they will all disappear; I was basically racing to see them before they are gone,” Fisher said. “There’s a bit of bleakness that our planet is going into unchartered territory.”

Glaciers, which are vast masses of snow and ice that move under their own weight, are receding at varying rates around the world due to rising global temperatures. Glacier National Park in Montana has seen some of the most dramatic recorded losses, with glaciers set to disappear from the park as early as 2030.

Globally, glaciers have lost around 400bn tons in mass a year since 1994, which is raising concerns for the millions of people and animals that rely upon glaciers for melt water. The retreat of huge glaciers in Antarctica and Greenland is also driving sea level rise.

Glacier National Park in Montana has seen some of the most dramatic recorded losses, with glaciers set to disappear from the park as early as 2030. Photograph: Garrett Fisher

The decline of glaciers has previously been illustrated by comparative pictures showing how the modern ice masses looked several decades previously, and more recently. But individual images of modern glaciers can also contain evidence of retreat, according to Lisa McKeon, a physical scientist at the US Geological Society.

“Pictures don’t really show the loss in ice volume but they can show the loss of area,” she said. “You can see previous moraines, which are rocks pushed by a glacier’s movement, far from the current edge of the glacier.”

Grand Teton with Schoolroom Glacier in Wyoming. Photograph: Garrett Fisher

McKeon has previously exhibited her own collection of comparative photos of glacier retreat at various galleries, where she left a comment book for visitors to log their thoughts.

“I’ve perused the comment book for the past two years or so, there’s a lot of sadness there,” she said. “It’s change. It evokes a sense of loss.”

Fisher’s book contains 177 pictures, many of them taken in precarious conditions, as the wind tossed the 69-year-old Piper PA11 plane that Fisher’s grandfather refurbished after he found it in a dilapidated condition in a North Carolina barn in the 1980s.

“I learned to fly in this plane,” said Fisher, who is from New York state but has spent a lot of time in Colorado and studied Rocky Mountain National Park there. “There is no heat, the door had to be open when taking pictures so there was an ungodly cold. The plane only has 100 horsepower but when you get to 15,000ft it only has around half of that. I would just go off on my own and hope the engine didn’t fail.”

Flying over Glacier National Park, in Montana, was the most challenging because of the “most absurd terrain, the extreme wind, the concentration of grizzly bears if I did have to land – I really didn’t want to go down there,” Fisher said.