Climate change: Iceland holds funeral for melted glacier

[Tender Branson]

Iceland has officially declared a major glacier dead:

Iceland has marked the melting of a glacier by holding a mock funeral to say goodbye.

The glacier called Okjokull, is the first in the country to be lost to climate change, after the warmest July ever on record.

Iceland loses about 11 billion tonnes of ice per year, and scientists have warned that there are about 400 other glaciers also at risk.

They fear all of the island's glaciers will be gone by 2200. Glaciers cover about 11% of Iceland's surface.

The funeral was organised by local researchers and staff at Rice University in the United States. But they were far from the only ones in attendance.

The country's Prime Minister Katrin Jakobsdottir and former United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Mary Robinson, were also there.

They were joined by hundreds of scientists, journalists and members of the public who trekked to the site.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/newsround/49405023

[Farmlands]

The little inscription marking "415 CO2" hits hard, as it's a certainty that the rest of the country's glaciers are going to melt too, as carbon dioxide concentrations grow larger, but there's little the Icelandic population can do to stop it.

[LAKISYLVANIA]

Melting of the glaciers also does activate the volcanoes, there was a huge bump of destructive eruptions after the last ice age in Iceland.