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Just don’t look up at the glacier

Published 28th September 2009 - 22 comments - 4048 views -

This past weekend, Iceland’s foreign minister gave a speech at the United Nations in New York. Amazingly, only a small part of the speech dealt with Iceland’s current economic woes – the rest was devoted to climate change.

It is great to hear a prominent member of our government is concerning himself with climate change. Great because it has seemed a definite non-issue in Iceland over the past few years. Granted, in the past 12 months Iceland has had some other pretty serious issues to contend with, such as a full blown economic and political crisis – so it’s perhaps not all that surprising.

But I don’t think it’s just the crisis. I suspect a major reason climate change hasn’t got much press in Iceland is because, so far, well – we kind of like it. I mean – what’s not to like? Our summers are warmer now, so we can do things like sit outside at cafés, lounge by the poolside and work on our tans, even swim in the ocean. Things that used to cost us a fortune when we had to travel abroad to do them.

Summers have definitely changed around here. Whereas in the past we’d only get a handful of good days every summer, now we frequently have many days of blissfully gorgeous weather in a row. Farmers are happy, too. They get a longer growing season and are experimenting with new types of crops, like wheat and barley.

Winters, too, are much nicer than they used to be. In the past the winters would be long and harsh and filled with snow; these days they’re usually characterized by balmy temperatures and just the occasional blizzard.

And yet, the trade-off for this new level of comfort is visible right in front of us. The beautiful Snæfellsjökull glacier, visible from the capital area on clear days, is melting right in front of our eyes. Even though it is located hundreds of kilometres away, across a wide bay, when we look closely we can see the ice cap is far thinner than was even ten years ago.

Snæfellsjökull glacier

Even closer to home, there’s Mt. Esja and the snowdrift. Mt. Esja is located on the other side of an inlet from Reykjavík and watches over the city like a sentinel. It holds a special place in the hearts of most Icelanders. Most Reykjavík residents grew up with special character of its slopes right in front of their eyes, which up until a few years ago had a perpetual white dot right near the top, even in the height of summer. The white dot looked like this:

IMG_7874

That snowdrift has been permanent on the slopes of Mt. Esja for as long as anyone can remember, except for the odd year [maybe five over the past century] when there was little snow during the winter and the summers were exceptionally warm. For the past nine years, however, the snowdrift on Mt. Esja has melted completely, every year.

Reykjavík and Esja

So – we know. We see it. It just hasn’t started to become painful yet. Climate change is still a welcome development in Iceland – as long as we can view it out of context, and don’t look up at the glacier.

[Photos: Esja with dot courtesy of vovchychko; Esja without dot courtesy of s.chivers; Snæfellsjökull courtesy of RamjetDK.]

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