Iceland commemorates first glacier lost to effects of climate change
Iceland honoured its first glacier lost to climate change as scientists said about 400 others on the subarctic island risk the same fate.
A bronze plaque was unveiled yesterday at a ceremony to commemorate Okjokull – which translates to “Ok Glacier” – in the west of Iceland, in the presence of local researchers and their peers at Rice University in the United States, who initiated the project.
Glaciologists stripped Okjokull of its glacier status in 2014, a first for Iceland, when it failed to meet requirements because of its size and lack of movement. Iceland’s Prime Minister Katrin Jakobsdottir and Environment Minister Gudmundur Gudbrandsson attended the event.
“This will be the first monument to a glacier lost to climate change anywhere in the world,” Cymene Howe, associate professor of anthropology at Rice University, said in July.
The plaque bears the inscription “A letter to the future”, and is intended to raise awareness about the decline of glaciers and the effects of climate change.
“In the next 200 years all our glaciers are expected to follow the same path. This monument is to acknowledge that we know what is happening and what needs to be done. Only you know if we did it,” the plaque reads.
It is also labelled “415 ppm CO2,” referring to the record level of carbon dioxide measured in the atmosphere last May.
In an opinion piece for The New York Times published the day before the memorial, Ms Jakobsdottir lamented the devastating effect climate change was having on her country’s natural resources.
“In just a few decades, Iceland may no longer be characterised by the Snaefellsjokull, famously known as the entrance to Earth in Jules Verne’s Journey to the Centre of the
Earth,” she wrote. “In short: the ice is leaving Iceland.” Prof Howe said: “Memorials everywhere stand for human accomplishments, like the
deeds of historic figures, or the losses and deaths we recognise as important.
“By memorialising a fallen glacier, we want to emphasise what is being lost – or dying – the world over, and also draw attention to the fact that this is something that humans have ‘accomplished’, although it is not something we should be proud of.”
Prof Howe said the conversation about climate change could be abstract, with many dire statistics and sophisticated scientific models that can feel incomprehensible.
“Perhaps a monument to a lost glacier is a better way to fully grasp what we now face,” she said, highlighting “the power of symbols and ceremony to provoke feelings”.
Iceland loses about 11 billion tonnes of ice per year, and scientists fear all of the island country’s 400-plus glaciers will be gone by 2200, according to Prof Howe and her Rice University colleague Dominic Boyer.
In 1890, Okjokull’s ice covered 16 square kilometres, but by 2012, it measured only 0.7 square kilometres, according to a 2017 report from the University of Iceland.
In 2014, “we made the decision that this was no longer a living glacier, it was only dead ice, it was not moving”, Oddur Sigurdsson, a glaciologist with the Icelandic Meteorological Office, told AFP.
According to a study published by the International Union for Conservation of Nature in April, nearly half of the world’s heritage sites could lose their glaciers by 2100 if greenhouse gas emissions continue at the current rate.
Mr Sigurdsson said he feared “that nothing can be done to stop it. The inertia of the climate system is such that, even if we could stop introducing greenhouse gases into the atmosphere right now, it will keep on warming for a century and a half or two centuries before it reaches equilibrium.”