Iceland was yesterday set to honour the passing of Okjokull, its first glacier lost to climate change, as scientists warn that some 400 others on the subarctic island risk the same fate.
A bronze plaque was to be unveiled in a ceremony to mark Okjokull in the west of Iceland, in the presence of local researchers and their peers at Rice University in the US, who initiated the project.
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.
Associate Professor Cymene Howe at Rice University’s anthropology department noted that the conversation about climate change can be abstract, with many dire statistics and sophisticated scientific models that can feel incomprehensible. Hence, a monument to a lost glacier is a better way to fully grasp what we now face, she explained.
Iceland loses about 11 billion tonnes of ice per year, and scientists fear all of its 400-plus glaciers will be gone by 2200.
Glaciologists stripped Okjokull of its glacier status in 2014, a first for Iceland. In 1890, the glacier’s ice covered 16 square kilometres but by 2012, it measured just 0.7 square kilometres, according to a report from the University of Iceland from 2017.
To have the status of a glacier, the mass of ice and snow must be thick enough to move by its own weight.
A study published by the International Union for Conservation of Nature in April said nearly half of the world’s heritage sites could lose their glaciers by 2100 if greenhouse gas emissions continue at the current rate. According to Dr Oddur Sigurdsson, a glaciologist with the Icelandic Meteorological Office, even if the introduction of greenhouse gases can be stopped right now, the Earth will keep on warming for a century and a half or two centuries before it reaches equilibrium.
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Source: The Straits Times, 19 August 2019