Reykjavik (AFP)

As a symbol to attract attention, Iceland will unveil Sunday a plaque in memory of Okjökull, the first glacier on the island to have lost its status, engulfed by the warming, the opportunity for scientists to warn about the consequences of climate change.

The commemorative plaque is due to open around 14:00 GMT, on the site of the former Okjökull (literally "Ok glacier" in Icelandic), in the west of the island.

Icelandic Prime Minister Katrin Jakobsdottir and former United Nations Commissioner for Human Rights Mary Robinson are expected to attend the ceremony.

"This will be the first monument erected in honor of a glacier that has disappeared because of global climate change," said Cymene Howe, a professor of anthropology at Rice University in the United States, in July. the initiative of the project.

With this plaque in gold letters titled in Icelandic and English "A letter for the future", the researchers hope to raise awareness of the decline of glaciers and the effects of climate change.

The plate also bears the mention "415 ppm CO2", in reference to the record level of carbon dioxide concentration recorded in the atmosphere last May.

"By commemorating a fallen glacier, we want to focus on what is disappearing - or dying - around the world, and drawing attention to the fact that it is something that has been 'done' by men, although we should not be proud of it, "explains Cymene Howe, quoted in a statement.

"Discussions on climate change can be very abstract, accompanied by many catastrophic statistics and complex scientific models (...) incomprehensible," she adds.

Thus, says the professor, "a monument to the memory of a disappeared glacier may be a good way to understand what we are facing today".

According to the researcher and her colleague Dominic Boyer, Iceland loses about eleven billion tons of ice every year. Scientists are worried about the disappearance of some 400 glaciers on subarctic island within 200 years.

- Declassified in 2014 -

The Okjökull ice, which still covered 16 square kilometers in 1890, was only 0.7 km2 in 2012, according to a report from the University of Iceland published in 2017.

In 2014, "we made the decision that it was no longer a glacier, it was only dead ice that did not move," says geologist Oddur Sigurdsson, who studied 'Okjökull. The glacier is then downgraded, a first for Iceland.

To have glacier status, the ice and snow mass of it "must be thick enough to move with its own weight", 40 to 50 meters thick to produce enough pressure to make malleable ice, he explains.

Nearly half of World Heritage sites could lose their glaciers by 2100 if greenhouse gas emissions continue at current rates, according to a study by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) published in April.

Oddur Sigurdsson says "fear that nothing can be done to stop" these disappearances. "The inertia of the climate system is such that, even if we stopped the introduction of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere right now, it would continue to heat up for a century and a half or two before reaching equilibrium" , he says.

In Iceland, the Vatnajökull National Park in the south of the island, a UNESCO World Heritage Site since July, bears the name of the glacier it shelters and which still retains the title of the largest ice cap in the world. Europe.

© 2019 AFP