http://www.commondreams.org/headlines/102200-01.htm

Published on Sunday, October 22, 2000 in the London Observer
Now Europe's Biggest Glacier Falls To Global Warming
Majestic northern river of ice will break apart within five years, warn top scientists

by Robin McKie

Europe's biggest glacier is about to disintegrate. The mighty
Breidamerkurjökull in southern Iceland is breaking apart and
will slide into the north Atlantic in the next few years.

Researchers' discovery of the imminent destruction of this
gigantic river of ice demonstrates starkly that global warming
is now making a serious impact on the northern hemisphere,
threatening to melt ice caps and raise sea levels round the world.

The grim revelation will be seized upon by green activists
who believe that industrial gas emissions are responsible
for heating the planet's atmosphere. If the continent's biggest
glacier is falling apart, they ask, what further catastrophes
await us?

The break-up of Breidamerkurjökull also threatens to destroy
a key Icelandic beauty spot. Each year hordes of visitors
take boat trips around the dozens of icebergs that regularly
'calve' from the glacier and festoon the lake at its base.
Moviemakers have used the breathtaking location for a host
of films, including the James Bond adventure A View to a Kill,
and the forthcoming Tomb Raider, starring Angelina Jolie.

But now silt and sediment - which have already started to pour
from the melting glacier - are likely to fill up the lake,
destroying this remarkable beauty spot.

'The glacier has been shrinking for most of the twentieth
century,' said Dr David Evans, of Glasgow University.
'However it is clear it is now approaching the point
where a great mass of it will break up, and pour down
to the sea. When it does, Jökulsarlon will probably
fill up with sediment.'

Breidamerkurjökull is the main glacier emanating from
the massive Vatnajökull ice sheet that covers much of
southern Iceland, and has been studied intensively for
the past century, beginning in 1903 when map makers
recorded that its icy snout rested only a few hundred
yards from the sea.

By 1945 United States military cartographers had found
it had receded a further few hundred yards from the coast.

Then, in 1965, Glasgow University surveyors arrived to make
new maps of Breidamerkurjökull and found the glacier had
slipped back from the sea by a couple of miles.

This survey was followed up in 1998 when another team from
Glasgow began a new survey using global positioning satellite
equipment and other high-precision devices.

For the past two years researchers Yvonne Finlayson and
Mike Shand, from the university's geography department,
have been collating this data. They have completed a detailed
topographic map of the region.

The results are startling. They show the great river of ice
has dwindled dramatically over the past 30 years. This recession
has revealed a giant portion of the huge fjord - once covered
completely by the glacier - has now been exposed as
Breidamerkurjökull's snout has retreated more than
five miles from the sea.

But detailed analysis of the glacier has revealed an even
more disturbing picture. The Glasgow team - working with
Loughborough University researchers led by David Twigg
- says a huge depression has formed over the glacier's
frozen heart. This hole rests over the portion of the
inland fjord still covered by ice.

'Effectively, the glacier is breaking up around that
hole and is slipping into the fjord,' said Evans.
'It is beginning to disintegrate and in the next
few years will collapse into the water.'

The disappearance of a massive ice floe that once coated
a large area of the Icelandic coast is a stark demonstration
of the increasing impact global warming is having on the
planet. The question is: to what extent is humanity
responsible for this heating, and what further impact
will it have on Earth?

Many environmentalists point out that industrial emissions
have allowed carbon dioxide to build up in the atmosphere
to dangerous levels. Sunlight is being trapped by this
carbon dioxide and causing the planet to warm. One estimate
suggests the Arctic has warmed by 6°C in the past 30 years,
while its ice covering has dropped from 10ft to 6ft.

Atmospheric levels of carbon dioxide have doubled in
the past century, just as global temperatures have risen.
The effects can be seen everywhere, green activists say,
including Breidamerkurjökull.

But such alarmist visions have to be tempered with knowledge
about the past behaviour of Iceland's glaciers. In the
seventeenth century the coastal land around Breidamerkurjökull
was ice-free and farmed quite intensively by local people.
Cattle and sheep grazed, and barley and wheat were grown.

Then, in the early decades of the eighteenth century,
the climate grew colder and giant tongues of ice emerged
from the Vatnajökull sheet, including the Breidamerkurjökull
glacier. These moved inexorably down to the coast,
covering pastures and crushing farmhouses that lay
in their path.

'This period is known as the Little Ice Age and it lasted
almost 200 years, reaching its peak, in Iceland, in 1890,
when Breidamerkurjökull got closest to the sea,' said Evans.

'That mini-ice age is over now, and the climate has been
getting warmer for the past 100 years. Hence the shrinking
and disintegration of the glacier.'

In the past 30 years, old farmlands have reappeared around
Breidamerkurjökull - most of it pockmarked with holes gouged
by receding glaciers.

Local people have already moved on to this land and begun
cropping grass and grazing sheep. 'The land is simply being
returned to its old use,' said Evans.

Whether this restoration of agricultural land and the loss
of the glacier is being triggered solely by natural climatic
variation, or is being speeded up by the effects of man
pumping industrial gases into the atmosphere, has yet
to be determined.

Either way, the fate of Breidamerkurjökull is our starkest
warning that global warming now has a direct impact on our
continent. The heat is on, whether we like it or not.

Tell-tale signs

Other indicators of global warming are:

- Winter is in retreat. Europe's growing season is 11 days longer
than it was 35 years ago.

- Sea levels have crept higher throughout the last century at
the rate of a millimetre a year.

- Hot summers. Six of the 10 warmest years ever recorded occurred
in the 1990s; the other four all happened in the late 1980s.

- Declining ice sheet. The Arctic ice cover is shrinking
by an area the size of the Netherlands every year.

© Guardian Newspapers Limited 2000

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