User:Gochicago091899/Climate of Iceland

Climate Change
750 square kilometers of Iceland’s glacier ice has melted since the year 2000. Iceland’s annual CO2 emissions and per capita CO2 emissions rose from 1950 to 2018, but both metrics have been on the decline since 2018. A majority of Iceland’s CO2 emissions come from oil.

Most Icelandic glaciers began retreating in the late 1800s, but current modeling studies suggest that glaciers would lose a quarter of their volume in the next hundred years with just a 1°C rise in global temperatures. The models also predict that glaciers could lose sixty percent of their volume if global temperatures rise by 2°C. At this rate, only small ice caps will remain after two hundred years. Some models predict Iceland's glacial mass will shrink a third by 2100.

Iceland’s retreating glaciers have global and local consequences. Melting of Iceland’s glaciers could raise sea levels by a centimeter, which could lead to erosion and flooding worldwide. Locally, glacial recession could cause crustal uplift, which could disrupt buildings. Some places in Iceland have already seen the crust rise at a rate of 40 millimeters per year.

Okjökull
Okjokull is a glacier in Iceland that melted in 2014. Okjokull is Iceland's first glacier to have melted due to climate change.

Name Change
Geologists estimate that Okjokull covered about 6 square miles in the late 1800s, but slowly shrunk until it officially lost its glacier status in 2014. When it "died", the 800 year old glacier's name was changed from Okjokull to Ok. Okjokull was pronounced dead in part due to its decrease in area, but also due to its inability to flow; a body of ice must be able to move to be defined as a glacier. “Jokull” means glacier in Icelandic, so this suffix was removed accordingly.

Funeral
In 2018, a documentary called Not Ok was released by Rice University anthropologists four years after its death. In 2019, roughly one hundred people held a funeral for Okjokull. Iceland’s prime minister at the time, Katrin Jakobsdottir, was among the attendees.

At the funeral, one high school student read a poem and a commemorative plaque, titled "A letter to the future," was placed on a boulder. As of 2022, this plaque was the only one commemorating a glacier lost to climate change. The plaque warned future readers that all of Iceland's glaciers would soon "follow the same path" as Okjokull.

Sustainability
In an effort to combat the effects climate change has on Iceland’s glaciers, Iceland has worked to make its electricity completely sustainable. As of 2015, nearly all of its electricity comes from renewable energy. Thirteen percent of the country’s electricity comes from geothermal energy—which also heats ninety percent of Iceland’s homes— and the rest comes from hydropower.