Okjökull was a dome -shaped glacier around the OK top crater, a 1,200 -meter volcano.
Two satellite photos taken by 33 years show the disappearance of a glacier in Iceland, the first to be declared dead as a result of anthropogenic climate change.
Okjökull was a dome -shaped glacier around the OK top crater, a 1,200 -meter volcano, 71 kilometers northwest of Reykjavik. The name Okjökull in Icelandic is translated as “OK glacier” Livescience.
In 1901, Okjökull’s ice covered an area of about 39 square kilometers, but when the first of the two satellite photos was taken in 1986, less than 2.6 square kilometers were left. When the second image was drawn in 2019, the ice covered less than 1 square kilometer, according to the NASA Earth Observatory.
The glacier was declared dead in 2014, when Icelandic glaciers revealed that the ice had diluted so much that gravity did not attract him down, which means he had stopped moving for the first time in tens of thousands of years.
100 people in his ‘funeral’
The death of the glacier was presented and explored in a 2018 short film entitled “Not Ok,” created by researchers at Rice University in Texas.
In August 2019, about 100 people, including researchers and politicians, attended Okjökull’s funeral near the top of OK, according to Guardian. During the ceremony, a commemorative plate was placed near the top, which was listed a brief text entitled “A Letter to the Future”.
The text is as follows: “OK is the first Icelandic glacier to lose its capacity as a glacier. In the next 200 years, all of our glaciers are expected to follow the same course. This monument is to recognize that we know what is going on and what needs to be done. Only you know if we did it. “
Plaka also mentioned the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, which at that time was 415 ppm. Today, in March 2025, the concentration is over 428 ppm, according to the US National Ocean and US atmosphere.
Due to the inconsistent monitoring and disagreements about what makes a glacier and what is not, it is not clear how many glaciers have been lost due to climate change. However, some researchers estimate that up to 10,000 glaciers of various sizes may have already been lost due to climate change, the Washington Post in 2024.
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