INSIDE THE MELTING HEART OF A GLACIER
ON THE edge of a glacier so black with volcanic dust it resembled a slag heap, we saw how climate change is changing the landscape.
We climbed over melting ice to enter a cave formed by water constantly running through the wall of the glacier.
From there we looked back across 1,100 yards of rock, moss and hardy mountain flowers to low banks of icy debris where our cars were parked. In 1965, that was where this 200ft glacier on Katla, Iceland’s most powerful volcano, reached its modern-time peak.
In the past 56 years it has steadily retreated in the face of the rising warmth of climate change, shrinking back towards its mother Myrdalsjokull. This has happened in less than a human lifetime.
It is like so many other ice caps in Iceland which cover 10 per cent of this country just below the Arctic Circle.
But at least Myrdalsjokull is still there, unlike the much smaller glacier Ok, north of Reykjavik. It has melted away and is now formally classed as dead.
The UN is to release its latest climate change update next week. With stronger warnings of world threats, including more extreme weather and rising sea levels, it will not be pleasant reading at Glasgow’s COP26 climate talks in November.
The Arctic, where temperatures are rising three times faster than the global average, is on the forefront of climate change – and Iceland’s glacial retreat is speeding up.
Its Met Office says an ice area more than five times the size of the Isle ofWight has gone in the last 120 years. But about
36 per of that overall loss has occurred in the past 20 years.
There is no sign of the retreat ending without drastic action to tackle climate change.
Iceland’s Institute of
Earth Sciences says models suggest the main ice caps will lose 25 to 35 per cent of their present volume within half a century, leaving only small glaciers on the highest peaks in 150–200 years.
Inside the melting heart of Katla ice cave, we saw this retreat in action.
The cave was a tapering hollow carved by meltwater into beautiful shapes tinged with every shade of blue. New caves are constantly forming up and down the ice wall at the mouth of the glacier. Wherever we stood, icy water trickled on to our heads, down our necks and into our boots.
Glaciers melt in summer but the winter snow is no longer replacing what is lost in the warmer months. A few miles further down the road, the loss has been even more spectacular. At Solheimajokull, a long river of ice pointing south from
Myrdalsjokull, a sequence of photos shows its rapid retreat in the past 50 years.
In 1969 its mouth was a mountain of ice drowning the hills in its path. By 2010 it had slunk back over the hills and far away, leaving just grass, moss and millennia of volcanic debris.
Hoffelsjokull in the South East has retreated 2.5 miles since 1890, creating a new lake at its mouth.
Another set of photos from 1989 and 2020 show the scale of the loss of the nearby Flaajokul.
The country’s Institute of Earth Sciences says volcanic activity has a “small effect” on the melting of glaciers and climate change is the driving force.
But Katla Ice Caves guide Thor Petursson, 66, a retired fishing boat skipper, said: “It’s bull. The glacier has retreated about one kilometre since 1965. Global warming is making this but Iceland has had warm periods before.
“The glaciers as they melt are revealing old remains from the Viking times. So the Vikings must have been up there. If Katla erupts it will put more greenhouse gases into the atmosphere than all the cars since Henry Ford made his first model.”
However the Icelandic Met Office’s latest review said: “Glaciers in Iceland have retreated rapidly for a quarter of a century, and glacier downwasting is one of the most obvious consequences of a warming climate in the country.
“Since 2000, the area of Iceland’s glaciers has decreased by 310 square miles and by more than 850 square miles since the end of the 19th century, when glaciers reached their maximum extent since the country’s settlement in the ninth century.”
Another study led by Iceland’s environment and natural resources ministry and Vatnajokull National Park said temperatures are predicted to rise by 2C during this century and the climate may continue warming during the next.
It said glacier models indicate that after 200 years there will be only small ice caps on the highest mountains of Vatnajokull, which could lose 25 per cent of its current volume in the next 50 years.
So in Iceland the Iceman does not cometh. If the flood of climate studies is correct, he’s in full retreat and may never be coming back.
John Ingham and Jonathan Buckmaster offset the greenhouse gases from their return flights to Iceland with C Level Earth – clevel.co.uk