Reykjavík Grapevine - 01.02.2019, Page 19

19 The Reykjavík Grapevine
Issue 02— 2019
The Okjökull glacier died in 2014.
It wasn’t the first Icelandic glacier to
pass away. Some estimates say that up
to ten named bodies of ice have previ-
ously expired, along with countless
more that were unnamed. But Okjökull
was the biggest, so far.
Over a period of years, Okjökull
melted faster than snowfall could
accumulate into new ice. The glacier
became thinner each year until, even-
tually, the ice in the bowl of the shield
volcano stopped moving. No longer
shifting under its own weight to create
glacial currents, Okjökull became
still—a once-living mass that glaciolo-
gists refer to as “dead ice.”
The “jökull” was stripped from its
name accordingly—today, the 1200m
peak in Borgarfjörður is now known
simply as “Ok.”
Standing at the foot of the snow-
bound mountain as the sun starts
to set on a freezing January evening,
I turn and scan the landscape. In
the distance, some of Ok’s surviv-
ing siblings can be seen. The dizzying
protrusion of Eiríksjökull mingles with
the clouds way up at 1672m, glowing
bright against the amber sky. Closer by,
the graceful 1360m sweep of Langjökull
blushes pink in the sunset as it slides
away to the horizon like a giant frozen
wall.
In the frigid midwinter, these peaks
seem unassailable. It’s hard to imagine
that such vast bodies of ice could melt
away entirely, becoming seabound
meltwater rivers, revealing the gnarled
and naked rock beneath. But that’s
exactly what the scientific community
tells us is already happening. It’s also,
I think to myself, what people probably
once thought about Ok.
NOT OK
Iceland has 269 named glaciers, from
the vast ice cap of Vatnajökull with
its many tongues and outlets, to the
towering, famously volcanic Eyjafjal-
lajökull overlooking the south coast,
and the much-admired snow-hooded
Snæfellsjökull, perched on the west-
ern Snæefellsnes peninsula. They’re
studied and monitored by a variety of
organisations who funnel their data to
the Icelandic Met Office, Veðurstofa.
Tómas Jóhannesson is the head of
Veðurstófa’s glacier group and one
of the people who collates the flood
of information, and examines the
complex ramifications. “Ok is the larg-
est named glacier to officially disap-
pear,” he says, in his Reykjavík office.
“Some snow patches remain, but a
glacier is by definition a mass of ice
so heavy that it flows under its own
weight, and has some dynamics. The
patches around Ok have become so
thin that they sit there without move-
ment, and therefore no longer qualify
as a glacier.”
Since the mid 1990s, rapid thin-
ning has been a near universal trend
in Iceland’s glaciers, with 95-100% of
Iceland’s glaciers decreasing in volume
annually. One of the most well known
cases is Sólheimajökull, a long and
serpentine glacier tongue of Mýrdal-
sjökull that winds its way down to
within a few kilometres of Route One.
“The overall retreat there is 1.5km,
and this is a typical variation,” says
Tómas. “Iceland’s total glacier-covered
area has shrunk by roughly 2000
square kilometres since the end of the
19th Century. We lose about 40 square
kilometres annually, which is quite a
remarkable area to become deglaciated
each year.”
I remark that it sounds like Sólhei-
majökull could be headed for the same
fate as Ok. “It’s a part of the larger
Mýrdalsjökull ice cap,” says Tómas. “So
the outlet will retreat to higher eleva-
tions, where the accumulation area is.
But this entire valley will be ice-free, in
the end.”
SERIOUS
CONSEQUENCES
Iceland’s glaciers have always been
through periods of accumulation—
when snowfall adds new ice to the
glacier—and ablation, when the rate
of melt and downwasting exceeds the
production of new ice. The measure-
ment of accumulation against ablation
to determine a glacier’s size is known
as mass balance, which fluctuates
naturally.
“The history of Iceland shows alter-
nating cool and warm periods,” says
Tómas. “This has always been the case.
But anthropogenic, man-made global
warming is now of such a magnitude
that it’s pulling our climate outside
of the natural variations. We’ve had
ice ages, and warmer periods than
now, which demonstrates that the
Earth’s climate goes through large
changes. We know that Iceland was
completely ice covered during the ice
age. We know roughly the causes that
led to the ice age, and what forcing in
All around the country,
the glaciers are rapidly melting.
What would deglaciation mean for
Iceland’s future?
Iceland
Thaws
Words: John Rogers Photos: Timothée Lambrecq