On Sunday, a group of about 100 scientists, politicians, and others hiked 2 hours up the desolate side of an extinct volcano northeast of Reykjavik, Iceland to commemorate the final demise of the Okjokull glacier, Iceland’s first glacier to be entirely lost due to climate change.
Once spanning an area of 38 square km, according to a 1901 geologic map, the Okjokull glacier had shrunk to 3 square km when aerial photographs were taken in 1978. In 2014, following two decades of warming summers, glaciologist Oddur Sigurdsson, of the Icelandic Meteorological Office, determined Okjokull was no longer a glacier, as it lacked sufficient thickness to move under gravity and was melting faster than snow could be replaced on its cap. At that time, “jokull,” meaning “glacier” in Icelandic, was dropped from its name and it has been called simply “Ok” since. Now, Ok is a smattering of snow and ice covering less than 1 square km.
Children among the group of ice mourners placed a copper memorial plaque at the site of the former glacier. Engraved on the plaque in Icelandic and English is the following remembrance:
A letter to the future
Ok is the first Icelandic glacier to lose its status as a glacier. 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.
August 2019
415ppm CO2
At the beginning of the same month, the Greenland ice sheet dumped 12.5 billion tons of meltwater into the ocean within just a 24-hour period, the largest single-day loss since ice loss records began in 1950. There is sufficient land ice on Greenland to raise global sea levels by about 25 feet.
“I know my grandchildren will ask me how this day was and why I didn’t do enough.”
Gunnhildur Hallgrimsdottir, 17, at the site of the former Okjokull glacier
