“Solely You Know if We Did It”: Iceland’s Heartbreaking Glacier Memorial For The Future

In 1901, a geological map of Iceland’s Central Highlands depicted the Okjökull glacier as a big swathe of ice spanning 38 sq. kilometres. By 1945 it had shrunk to only 5 sq. kilometres. Not lengthy after 2005, it was all however gone.

In 2014, Okjökull misplaced its glacier standing; now, it is only a defend volcano with no glacial cowl in any respect.

Sadly, that is very probably the direct results of local weather change, and except issues change, this won’t be the final glacier to have this destiny.

A crew of researchers and documentary makers have now highlighted this loss – in addition to the losses to return – by making a memorial for the misplaced Okjökull glacier (as of late referred to easily as Okay, having misplaced the -jökull or “glacier” a part of its identify).

Andri Snaer Magnason, the creator of the memorial, just isn’t mincing phrases.

“Okay is the primary Icelandic glacier to lose its standing as a glacier.

Within the subsequent 200 years all our glaciers are anticipated to observe the identical path.

This monument is to acknowledge that we all know what is going on and what must be executed

Solely you recognize if we did it.”

Together with this passage, the memorial additionally consists of the quantity 415ppm CO2: the file degree of carbon dioxide in our ambiance reached in Could this yr, the primary time this has occurred in human historical past.

(Rice College)

“This would be the first monument to a glacier misplaced to local weather change wherever on the planet,” says anthropologist Cymene Howe from Rice College.

“By marking Okay’s passing, we hope to attract consideration to what’s being misplaced as Earth’s glaciers expire. These our bodies of ice are the biggest freshwater reserves on the planet and frozen inside them are histories of the ambiance. They’re additionally typically vital cultural kinds which can be stuffed with significance.”

Many glaciers, in Iceland and elsewhere on the planet, are shedding an enormous quantity of ice to a warming local weather. With Asia’s mountain glaciers quickly melting and depleting the area’s folks of treasured water sources, and with Antarctica alone shedding 252 billion tons of ice yearly, the onus is on us to do one thing.

“One in all our Icelandic colleagues put it very properly when he stated, ‘Memorials usually are not for the useless; they’re for the dwelling,'” Howe stated.

“With this memorial, we need to underscore that it’s as much as us, the dwelling, to collectively reply to the fast lack of glaciers and the continued impacts of local weather change. For Okay glacier it’s already too late; it’s now what scientists name ‘useless ice.'”