Iceland is in mourning, and climate change is to blame.
The Nordic island nation held a funeral on Sunday for the Okjökull glacier, the first in the country to melt as a result of climate change.
According to The Guardian, around 100 people attended the ceremony, including Iceland’s prime minister, Katrin Jakobsdottir, UN Human Rights Commissioner, Mary Robinson, local researchers and colleagues from the United States who organised the commemoration.
A plaque has been mounted on a rocky surface once covered by the thick sheet of ice which is titled, “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,” the plaque reads. “This monument is to acknowledge that we know what is happening and what needs to be done. Only you know if we did it.”
Cymene Howe, the associate professor of anthropology at Rice University in Texas told The Guardian that Iceland loses about 11 billion tonnes of ice per year, with scientists fearing all of the island’s 400-plus glaciers will be gone by 2200.
Last week, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration announced that July 2019 was the hottest month ever recorded. Rising temperatures are having an impact on many parts of the world, but they are also melting ice at an alarming rate.
WWF states that the most troubling consequences of melting Arctic ice is rising sea levels, which can “increase coastal erosion and elevate storm surge as warming air and ocean temperatures create more frequent and intense coastal storms like hurricanes and typhoons.”
Sadly, the death of the Okjökull glacier in Iceland isn’t the only shocking result of climate change we’ve recently witnessed. Last week, temperatures at the highest point of the Greenland ice sheet rose above freezing and melted the snow there for the first time since 2012, according to Forbes.
Greenland lost 12.5 billion tonnes of ice in one day, an event which wasn’t predicted to happen for another 50 years.
If this staggering environmental impact isn’t enough to inspire real action against climate change, what will?