Jakobsdottir writes: "Climate change is melting glaciers worldwide. Only we can stop it."
A NASA Earth Observatory image showing the Ok Glacier in Iceland, which has turned into a crater lake. (photo: ASA Earth Observatory/EPA/Shutterstock)
19 August 19
Climate change is melting glaciers worldwide. Only we can stop it.
yjafjallajokull, Iceland’s sixth-largest glacier, gained worldwide recognition when the volcano lurking under it erupted in 2010. Large levels of volcanic ash caused air travel disruptions in Europe, and news reporters across the world struggled with the difficult pronunciation of Eyjafjallajokull, much to the amusement of us native speakers. A less-known and less-tongue-twisting glacier is Ok, which is on a mountaintop in Western Iceland.
But Ok is no longer a glacier.
The ice field that covered the mountain in 1900 — close to six square miles — has now been replaced by a crater lake. It is certainly beautiful, surrounded by patchy snowfields, and is now the highest lake in Iceland. But that beauty quickly fades in the eyes of anyone who knows what was there before and why it is no longer there. Ok’s disappearance is yet another testimony of irreversible global climate change.
