Rice researchers help memorialize Iceland’s lost glacier
Researchers from Rice University will be among those honoring the first major glacier in Iceland lost to climate change with a memorial plaque Sunday.
Okjökull, or Ok in English, was a glacier in western Iceland on top of a volcanic mountain that at one point reached 15 square kilometers and likely began forming in the 14th or 15th century. But today it is dead.
“Ok is the first Icelandic glacier to lose its status as a glacier,” the plaque reads in Icelandic and English. “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 memorial, the first of its kind in the world, will be installed atop Ok mountain to commemorate the site where Okjökull stood. Iceland’s prime minister also plans to attend.
Cymene Howe, an associate professor of anthropology at Rice, said in a news release that the ceremony is the first memorial to a glacier lost to climate change anywhere in the world.
“Memorials everywhere stand for either human accomplishments like the deeds of historic figures, or the losses and deaths we recognize as important,” Howe said. “By memorializing a fallen glacier, we want to emphasize 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.”
Howe and Dominic Boyer, also a professor of anthropology at Rice, produced the 2018 documentary “Not Ok” about the lost glacier.
After retreading for years, Ok was declared “dead ice,” glacial ice that is no longer moving in 2014. Iceland’s glaciers covered more than 12 percent of the country in 1890. But by 2017, it was down to 10.3 percent. The country loses about 11 billion tons of ice per year, and scientists fear all of the island country’s 400-plus glaciers will be gone by 2200, the release says.
The researchers said they hope the monument will raise awareness about not only the decline of Iceland’s glaciers, but also the impact of climate change.
“The conversation about climate change can be very abstract, with many devastating statistics and sophisticated scientific models that may feel incomprehensible,” Howe said in the release. “Perhaps a monument to a lost glacier is a better way to fully grasp what we now face.”
The memorial follows the hottest month in recorded human history. July brought heatwaves across the globe and was about 1.2 degrees Celsius warmer than the pre-industrial era, according to data by the World Meteorological Organization and others. It also follows a week in which the Houston area saw seven straight days of 100-plus weather.
“Climate change is first and foremost a social problem — one with physical manifestations,” Boyer said. “The challenges we face now — including ones that are melting the glaciers — are that global civilization and its infrastructures of economy, transportation and information are based fundamentally on fossil fuel use.”