Iceland students see chilling reality of melting glacier
Vik: Icelandic seventh-grader Lilja Einarsdottir is on an unusual field trip with her class: they’re measuring the Solheimajokull glacier to see how much it has shrunk in the past year, witnessing climate change first-hand. “It is very beautiful but at the same time it is very sad to see how much it has melted,” says Lilja, bundled up against the autumn chill in a blue pompom hat. Each October since 2010, now-retired schoolteacher Jon Stefansson has brought students aged around 13 from a school in Hvolsvollur — a village about 60 kilometres away — to the glacier to record its evolution. The results are chilling: nestled between two moss-covered mountain slopes, Solheimajokull has shrunk by an average of 40 metres per year in the past decade, according to the students’ measurements. The glacier receded by 11 metres in 2019, a significant amount but far from the record 110 metres registered last year. “It depends more or less on the weather (and) how the glacier is breaking,” explains teacher Stefansson. “Sometimes you get a big cliff falling into the water and then you get a very, very big measurement.” Since the school started its measurements, the glacier has shrunk by 380 metres in almost a decade. “When we see this, it’s like proof (of global warming). If we thought that we were maybe wrong, this is proof we weren’t,” says 12-year-old Birna Bjornsdottir. The measurements are neither scientifically exact nor official but they do indicate the changes underway and their acceleration in recent years. Official measurements from the Iceland Geological Society show Solheimajokull shrank by around 200 metres in 2018, putting it among the country’s top three glacier shrinkages. It has been receding every summer since 1996. The melting can be observed with the naked eye, with drops of water dripping from the ice, sometimes running into little streams. “I see a large change in the glacier’s volume: it’s a lot lower than it used to be,” says Daniel Saulite, a Scottish guide who has worked on the glacier for five years. “In the front, there is also a lot more crevassing, and also the access becomes increasingly difficult.” Solheimajokull, where the students go, is a popular tourist spot as it is one of the closest to Reykjavik, only 150 kilometres away. (AFP)
Jewish graves desecrated in Denmark
Copenhagen: Vandals desecrated more than 80 graves at a Jewish cemetery in the western Danish town of Randers, police said on Sunday. “More than 80 gravestones were daubed with green graffiti and some were overturned” at the Ostre Kirkegard cemetery, a statement said. “There are no symbols or words written on the gravestones but paint has been daubed on them,” the Ritzau news agency quoted police spokesman Bo Christensen as saying. Police said a complaint had been made Saturday but they did not know when the vandalism had occurred. The Randers burial ground dates back to the early 19th century when the town’s 200-strong Jewish community was Denmark’s largest outside the capital Copenhagen, which is today home to most of the country’s 6,000 Jews. Copenhagen’s Great Synagogue was targeted in a 2015 shooting which saw one security officer killed after an earlier attack on a conference on freedom of expression also left one person dead. Five police were injured in the twin attacks which saw police gun down 22-year-old perpetrator Omar El-Hussein, a Danish citizen of Palestinian origin. (AFP)
