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Greenpeace activist Erika Augustinsson comparing a photo of Blomstrandbreen (1928) with the present situation.
Enlarge ImageBut what if you could visit one of the most remote areas of the planet a hundred years later and see how it has changed? How activities that take place far from sight have a lasting impact on our environment. Would the changes be so subtle?
Not in the far reaches of the Arctic circle, the changes are obvious. Almost a hundred years later, standing where researchers from the Norwegian Polar Institute took photos documenting glaciers on the island Svalbard, we can see that there have been remarkable changes, and not for the better.
The
island is more than 600 kilometres from the northern coast of Norway.
The name Svalbard means "the land with the cold coasts" and about two
thirds of the landmass is covered in glaciers. It is a sad irony that
temperature increases due to climate change means that the glaciers of
Svalbard are retreating.
It doesnt take specialised scientific instruments or even a long measuring tape to know that the landscape has changed dramatically on Svalbard over the last hundred years.
The glaciers in the Kongsfjorden area, where we documented the landscape during our voyage, began an almost continuous retreat around 1900. Blomstrandbreen has retreated around two kilometres in the last 80 years. Since 1960, the average retreat of the glacier has been about 35 metres per year, and even higher in the last decade.
The
results of our research came as no great surprise. Glaciers in this
spectacular Arctic region are showing an overall retreat because of
higher temperatures. And it fits the pattern of mountain glaciers
around the world. Glaciers are on the wane and we risk losing them
altogether if we dont massively reduce greenhouse emissions.
Glacier retreats are one of the most visible and reliable signs that warming and climate change is real not just figures in a scientific report. In this way, they are also important indicators of global climate change.
The blame can be put squarely on human activity. Our addiction to fossil fuels releases millions of tonnes of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, and this is what is causing temperatures to rise, and our future to melt before our eyes.
Glaciers are more than just magnificent landscapes of ice and snow. Around the world glaciers provide water for millions of people, animals and plants. Increased temperatures brought about by greenhouse polluting fuels like coal, oil and gas, are destroying glaciers. Unless we break our addiction to fossil fuels, we risk the wholesale destruction of glaciers, which would have a huge impact on billions of lives.
Climate change is a global problem - not only do we risk losing the world's glaciers, but we face many other impacts such as increased floods, droughts and storms, loss of coral reefs, sea level rise and rapid spread of vector borne diseases.
World leaders are slow to take up the warning so we have come to the ends of the Earth, literally, to remind governments of what is at stake if they do not take action at this months Earth Summit in Johannesburg. Climate change is hurting the whole world, not just the Arctic, and clean renewable energy is a crucial. They must get it right now, or there will be many places we wont be able to stand and ponder the past.
Read about the crew experiences onboard the Rainbow Warrior in the Arctic Circle.
More on Glaciers:
Introduction to the issue pdf file (9k)
Background on global glacial retreat pdf file (16k)
Send in your Glacier pictures
Links:
Alpine Glacial Retreat (in german)
Backgrounders on the individual Glaciers:
Franz Josef - New Zealand, pdf (7k)
Grinnell - US, pdf (6k)
Orubare - Uganda, pdf (7k)
Qori Kalis - Peru, pdf (7k)
Pasterze - Austria, pdf (8k)
Imja - Nepal, pdf (10k)
Historic images used by kind permission of the Norwegian Polar Institute.
