Iceland commemorates the death of the first glacier due to climate change

A project promoted by scientists and environmentalists from the United States and Iceland will commemorate tomorrow the death of the first glacier on this volcanic island in the North Atlantic, due to the climate change generated by the activity human.

The promoters of the idea, members of the Icelandic Hiking Society and ordinary citizens will climb the more than 1,400 meters that lead to the top of the old Okjokull glacier, where they will place a plaque to draw attention to the climate threat.

"In the next 200 years, all our major glaciers should disappear, this monument proves that we know what is happening and what needs to be done, you will only know if we have done it," says the text in Icelandic and English written by the writer Andri Snær Magnason.

The origin of the project dates back five years, when Icelandic geologist Oddur Sigurðsson declared him officially dead.

"It was something that happened a long time ago.I was not healthy, it was shrinking very fast.I wanted to go check and found that it was well below the limits, "Sigurðsson told EFE.

The ice floe of the glacier had an extension of 15 square kilometers and a thickness of 50 meters at the beginning of the 20th century, but in 2014, it had been reduced to less than one square kilometer and to 15 meters in thickness, which made the geologist consider "a pack of dead ice".

The disappearance of the Okjökull also touched the tongue and the old glacier was simply considered Ok Mountain, name that allowed the play on words with which a documentary ("Not ok") was baptized last year.

The documentary is the result of the efforts of two anthropologists from Rice University (US), Dominic Boyer and Cymene Howe, who contacted Oddur Sigurðsson, who is interested in the history of the glacier.

The next step was to organize the memorial and the "non-glacial" trip, during the baptism of the morning visit.

Oddur Sigurðsson also revealed that in recent decades, several dozen glaciers have disappeared in Iceland, although they are smaller than Okjökull. (Télam)