Ice Man
Posted by Lisa at 8:00 PM,
June 19, 2005
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Magnus arrives back from the glacier
© Greenpeace |
It's been raining on and off all day today and being Sunday not much was really going on. I spent my time editing photos and the blog entries, while we had an open ship and many of the crew, who are leaving tomorrow, spent some of their final day sight seeing. I received the following comments from the scientist who flew in the helicopter yesterday. There will be a public announcement tomorrow regarding what he discovered during the visit to the glacier but here are some words from the "Ice Man" himself....
"Being a professor of geophysics at the University of Iceland, I do a fair amount of teaching. My lecturing is mainly on how physics is applied to the study of the solid earth, but I also lecture on volcanoes. This includes how volcanoes interact with the surface of the earth, and in particular, how glaciers and volcanoes interact. Most of the research that I have been doing in the last several years is concentrated in this particular field. Although the effects of climate on glaciers are not really a part of my research, climatic effects cannot be ignored in my field of work. One of the tasks that I and my coworkers carry out is mapping changes in the shape and height of Mýrdalsjökull, the southernmost icecap in Iceland. Beneath this icecap lies the large caldera volcano named Katla, one of the most active and dangerous volcanoes in Iceland. And what has been very prominent over the last few years is a very rapid thinning and retreat of the outlet glaciers of Mýrdalsjökull, although the high icecap has as yet been little affected.
If the last 10 years had been an exception from a relatively stable climate there would be no cause for concern. But that is not the case. The records of glacier extent that have been collected by the Iceland Glaciological Society show that the last 80-100 years have been a period of very rapid decline in the size of the glaciers. This is a clear consequence of the warming that has taken place in Iceland. There is overwhelming evidence for the case that this warming, which is global, is caused by greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. If predictions of rapid future warming are correct, a century from now the glaciers in Iceland will only be small remnants of what they are at present. This would be a major loss for the richness of Iceland's natural landscape and would cause disruption in various ways. That would be regrettable of course. But the global consequences of the predicted warming such as sea level rise, increased frequency of extreme weather and drought in many parts of the world, are the main issues for the environment today."
Magnús T. Guðmundsson
