
Officials, activists and scientists gathered in Iceland Sunday for the funeral of the nation's first glacier to fall victim to the climate crisis.
Iceland's Okjokull glacier lost its glacier status in 2014, as AFP reported, and scientists fear it will only be the first of many to melt away. The country could lose all of its more than 400 glaciers by 2200.
"The symbolic death of a glacier is a warning to us, and we need action," former Irish President Mary Robinson, who was one of around 100 people to attend the event, told The Associated Press.
#ExtinctionRebellion The first funeral of a glacier in Iceland, the historic Ok. https://t.co/eOW6xFHKuX— Gisli Palsson (@Gisli Palsson)1566164138.0
The funeral attendees hiked for two hours up a volcano, where children laid a plaque in honor of the glacier that used to spread for about six square miles. The plaque, unveiled in July, is titled "A letter to the future" and includes text in both Icelandic and English, according to CNN.
"This monument is to acknowledge that we know what is happening and what needs to be done," it concludes. "Only you know if we did it."
The Okjokull glacier has now been stripped of its last two syllables, which mean "glacier" in Icelandic, and is merely called "Ok," according to The Associated Press. In 2014 it was declared dead because it no longer had enough snow and ice to cause it to be moved by its own weight, AFP reported. While it stretched 6.2 square miles in 1890, it only spread 0.7 square kilometers (approximately 0.3 square miles) by 2012.
Icelanders held a funeral for the first glacier to disappear from the country. It won't be the last: A geologist sa… https://t.co/LYYggeEff6— The Associated Press (@The Associated Press)1566154118.0
"We made the decision that this was no longer a living glacier, it was only dead ice, it was not moving," Icelandic Meteorological Office glaciologist Oddur Sigurdsson told AFP.
Icelandic Prime Minister Katrin Jakobsdottir, who attended the funeral Sunday, also wrote an opinion piece in The New York Times calling for climate action.
"On Sunday, we pay tribute to Ok," she wrote. "At the same time, we join hands to prevent future farewells to all the world's glaciers."
Ok is gone and it’s not OK https://t.co/4OrnERE5m3— Katrín Jakobsdóttir (@Katrín Jakobsdóttir)1566069363.0
Almost half of World Heritage Sites could lose their glaciers by 2100 if greenhouse gas emissions continue unchecked, AFP reported.
Currently, Iceland is aiming to do its part by going carbon neutral by 2040 at the latest. It has already achieved carbon neutral energy production, but the loss of more glaciers, which currently cover around 11 percent of Iceland, could also threaten the country's clean energy.
"A big part of our renewable energy is produced in the glacial rivers," Jakobsdottir said, as AFP reported. "The disappearance of the glaciers will affect our energy system."
Iceland isn't the only country that will be harmed by the disappearance of glaciers. CNN gave a rundown of some of the potential impacts of global ice melt, from Antarctica to the Himalayas.
- Sea level rise could displace as many as two billion people by 2100.
- Islands like Tuvalu, the Maldives and the Marshall Islands could be entirely swallowed by rising water levels.
- The drinking water of millions of people who depend on glaciers like those in the Andes or Himalayas could be threatened.
- The warmer temperatures and flooding associated with sea level rise could disrupt the global food supply.
- Increased coastal flooding could overflow sewage treatment plants, spreading disease.
- Rising sea levels could harm the economy as they threaten the trading activities and maritime industries of the world's ports.
- Melting ice sheets could exacerbate global warming, since open water tends to absorb the solar radiation that ice reflects.
- Redwoods are the world's tallest trees.
- Now scientists have discovered they are even bigger than we thought.
- Using laser technology they map the 80-meter giants.
- Trees are a key plank in the fight against climate change.
They are among the largest trees in the world, descendants of forests where dinosaurs roamed.
Pixabay / Simi Luft
<p><span>Until recently, measuring these trees meant scaling their 80 meter high trunks with a tape measure. Now, a team of scientists from University College London and the University of Maryland uses advanced laser scanning, to create 3D maps and calculate the total mass.</span></p><p>The results are striking: suggesting the trees <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-020-73733-6" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">may be as much as 30% larger than earlier measurements suggested.</a> Part of that could be due to the additional trunks the Redwoods can grow as they age, <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-020-73733-6" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">a process known as reiteration</a>.</p>New 3D measurements of large redwood trees for biomass and structure. Nature / UCL
<p>Measuring the trees more accurately is important because carbon capture will probably play a key role in the battle against climate change. Forest <a href="https://www.wri.org/blog/2020/09/carbon-sequestration-natural-forest-regrowth" target="_blank">growth could absorb billions of tons</a> of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere each year.</p><p>"The importance of big trees is widely-recognised in terms of carbon storage, demographics and impact on their surrounding ecosystems," the authors wrote<a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-020-73733-6" target="_blank"> in the journal Nature</a>. "Unfortunately the importance of big trees is in direct proportion to the difficulty of measuring them."</p><p>Redwoods are so long lived because of their ability to <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-020-73733-6" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">cope with climate change, resist disease and even survive fire damage</a>, the scientists say. Almost a fifth of their volume may be bark, which helps protect them.</p>Carbon Capture Champions
<p><span>Earlier research by scientists at Humboldt University and the University of Washington found that </span><a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0378112716302584" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Redwood forests store almost 2,600 tonnes of carbon per hectare</a><span>, their bark alone containing more carbon than any other neighboring species.</span></p><p>While the importance of trees in fighting climate change is widely accepted, not all species enjoy the same protection as California's coastal Redwoods. In 2019 the world lost the equivalent of <a href="https://www.worldwildlife.org/threats/deforestation-and-forest-degradation" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">30 soccer fields of forest cover every minute</a>, due to agricultural expansion, logging and fires, according to The Worldwide Fund for Nature (WWF).</p>Pixabay
<p>Although <a href="https://c402277.ssl.cf1.rackcdn.com/publications/1420/files/original/Deforestation_fronts_-_drivers_and_responses_in_a_changing_world_-_full_report_%281%29.pdf?1610810475" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">the rate of loss is reported to have slowed in recent years</a>, reforesting the world to help stem climate change is a massive task.</p><p><span>That's why the World Economic Forum launched the Trillion Trees Challenge (</span><a href="https://www.1t.org/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">1t.org</a><span>) and is engaging organizations and individuals across the globe through its </span><a href="https://uplink.weforum.org/uplink/s/uplink-issue/a002o00000vOf09AAC/trillion-trees" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Uplink innovation crowdsourcing platform</a><span> to support the project.</span></p><p>That's backed up by research led by ETH Zurich/Crowther Lab showing there's potential to restore tree coverage across 2.2 billion acres of degraded land.</p><p>"Forests are critical to the health of the planet," according to <a href="https://www.1t.org/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">1t.org</a>. "They sequester carbon, regulate global temperatures and freshwater flows, recharge groundwater, anchor fertile soil and act as flood barriers."</p><p><em data-redactor-tag="em" data-verified="redactor">Reposted with permission from the </em><span><em data-redactor-tag="em" data-verified="redactor"><a href="https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2021/03/redwoods-store-more-co2-and-are-more-enormous-than-we-thought/" target="_blank">World Economic Forum</a>.</em></span></p>EcoWatch Daily Newsletter
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