REYKJAVIK:
Iceland yesterday honored 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 will be unveiled in a ceremony starting
around 1400 GMT to mark Okjokull -- which translates to "Ok glacier"
-- in the west of Iceland, in the presence of local researchers and their peers
at Rice University in the United States, who initiated the project.

Iceland's Prime
Minister Katrin Jakobsdottir, Environment Minister Gudmundur Ingi Gudbrandsson,
and the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Mary Robinson are
also due to attend the event. "This will be the first monument to a glacier
lost to climate change anywhere in the world," Cymene Howe, associate
professor of anthropology at Rice University, said in July.

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.
"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 plaque reads.

It is also
labeled "415 ppm CO2," referring to the record level of carbon
dioxide measured in the atmosphere last May."Memorials everywhere stand
for either human accomplishments, like the deeds of historic figures, or the
losses and deaths we recognize as important," researcher 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 noted that
the conversation about climate change can be abstract, with many dire
statistics and sophisticated scientific models that can feel incomprehensible.
"Perhaps a monument to a lost glacier is a better way to fully grasp what
we now face," she said, highlighting "the power of symbols and
ceremony to provoke feelings". Iceland 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, according to Howe and her Rice University colleague
Dominic Boyer.

Stripped in 2014

Glaciologists
stripped Okjokull of its glacier status in 2014, a first for Iceland. In 1890,
the glacier ice covered 16 square kilometers but by 2012, it measured just 0.7
square kilometers, according to a report from the University of Iceland from
2017. In 2014, "we made the decision that this was no longer a living
glacier, it was only dead ice, it was not moving," Oddur Sigurdsson, a
glaciologist with the Icelandic Meteorological Office said.

To have the
status of a glacier, the mass of ice and snow must be thick enough to move by
its own weight. For that to happen the mass must be approximately 40 to 50
meters thick, he said. According to a study published by the International
Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN)in April, nearly half of the world's
heritage sites could lose their glaciers by 2100 if greenhouse gas emissions
continue at the current rate.

Sigurdsson said
he feared "that nothing can be done to stop it." "The inertia of
the climate system is such that, even if we could stop introducing greenhouse
gases into the atmosphere right now, it will keep on warming for century and a
half or two centuries before it reaches equilibrium." Iceland's Vatnajokull
National Park, which was added to UNESCO's World Heritage List in early July,
is home to, and named after, the largest ice cap in Europe. - AFP