A woman takes part in a ceremony to mark the "death" of the Pizol glacier above Mels, eastern Switzerland
(
AFP/Getty Images
)
Hundreds of people have held a high-altitude “funeral” for a Swiss glacier that has been lost to global warming.
Climate activists dressed in black clothes climbed to 2,600 metres above sea level to pay their respects to the last remnants of the Pizol glacier in the Glarus Alps, east Switzerland.
More than 80 per cent of the ice has disappeared since 2006, with just 26,000 sq metres now remaining. The glacier, which measured at 320,000 sq m by scientists in 1987, is expected to have vanished completely by the end of next decade.
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But it has already "lost so much substance that from a scientific perspective it is no longer a glacier," said Alessandra Degiacomi of the Swiss Association for Climate Protection.
Pizol was declared "dead" in a ceremony on Sunday. The glacier, which has been monitored since 1893, will be the first to be removed from the Swiss glacier surveillance network.
Climate change in the world's fastest-warming town
Show all 18
Climate change in the world's fastest-warming town
1/18
Husky dogs pull musher Audun Salte through the town of Longyearbyen in Svalbard, Norway. Salte worries that as temperatures warm, climate change could lead to the extinction of all life on Earth. A man who likes kissing and dancing with his dogs, he has 110 of them, is concerned most about the non-humans on the planet. "If climate change should be the end of humanity, I really don't care, but if climate change is the end of any animal species who hasn't contributed anything towards the speeding up of this process, that's why I am reacting," he said. "On the highway, when people slow down to look at a car crash, climate change is like that because everyone is slowing down to look at the accident but not realising that we are actually the car crash."
Reuters/Hannah McKay
2/18
A reindeer grazes on land. Since 1970, average annual temperatures have risen by 4 degrees Celsius in Svalbard, with winter temperatures rising more than 7 degrees, according to a report released by the Norwegian Centre for Climate Services in February.
Reuters/Hannah McKay
3/18
The Wahlenberg Glacier in Oscar II land
Reuters/Hannah McKay
4/18
Audun Salte prepares his huskies for sledding
Reuters/Hannah McKay
5/18
The town of Longyearbyen in the late evening light
Reuters/Hannah McKay
6/18
Husky dogs relax ahead of sledding
Reuters/Hannah McKay
7/18
International director of the Norwegian Polar Institute, Kim Holmen, relaxes with a cup of tea as he travels past the Wahlenberg Glacier. Holmen has lived in the northern Norwegian archipelago of Svalbard for three decades. He describes the changes he's seen as "profound, large and rapid." "We are losing the Svalbard we know. We are losing the Arctic as we know it because of climate change," he said. "This is a forewarning of all the hardship and problems that will spread around the planet."
Reuters/Hannah McKay
8/18
A sign warns of the danger from polar bears
Reuters/Hannah McKay
9/18
A woman poses next to a polar bear mural in town
Reuters/Hannah McKay
10/18
An iceberg floats near the Wahlenberg Glacier
Reuters/Hannah McKay
11/18
Wieslaw Sawicki holds a photograph of his son 44-year-old Michal Sawicki who was killed by an avalanche in Svalbard earlier this year. He worked as a geophysicist at the Polish Polar Research Station in Hornsund on the southern side of Svalbard. The Polish scientist and meteorologist Anna Gorska died when they fell from a mountain in May. Sawicki was an experienced mountaineer, scientist and explorer on his fifth stint for the institute in the Arctic. "Unfortunately, there was a huge snow cornice which looked like it was part of the peak of the mountain," said his father Wieslaw Sawicki, who was visiting Longyearbyen to meet with the governor of the archipelago. "It collapsed with them; they both fell into the abyss."
Reuters/Hannah McKay
12/18
Christiane Huebner plays with her dog Svea
Reuters/Hannah McKay
13/18
A pile of antlers on a ski sled
Reuters/Hannah McKay
14/18
Reuters/Hannah McKay
15/18
White wooden gravestones at risk of landslides due to the thawing permafrost underneath the ground, stand at the side of a mountain in the Longyearbyen cemetery
Reuters/Hannah McKay
16/18
A man looks at rugs for sale in a store in town
Reuters/Hannah McKay
17/18
A miner works inside the Gruve 7 mine, the only remaining operational coal mine on Svalbard
Reuters/Hannah McKay
18/18
Children play at the skatepark in town
Reuters/Hannah McKay
1/18
Husky dogs pull musher Audun Salte through the town of Longyearbyen in Svalbard, Norway. Salte worries that as temperatures warm, climate change could lead to the extinction of all life on Earth. A man who likes kissing and dancing with his dogs, he has 110 of them, is concerned most about the non-humans on the planet. "If climate change should be the end of humanity, I really don't care, but if climate change is the end of any animal species who hasn't contributed anything towards the speeding up of this process, that's why I am reacting," he said. "On the highway, when people slow down to look at a car crash, climate change is like that because everyone is slowing down to look at the accident but not realising that we are actually the car crash."
Reuters/Hannah McKay
2/18
A reindeer grazes on land. Since 1970, average annual temperatures have risen by 4 degrees Celsius in Svalbard, with winter temperatures rising more than 7 degrees, according to a report released by the Norwegian Centre for Climate Services in February.
Reuters/Hannah McKay
3/18
The Wahlenberg Glacier in Oscar II land
Reuters/Hannah McKay
4/18
Audun Salte prepares his huskies for sledding
Reuters/Hannah McKay
5/18
The town of Longyearbyen in the late evening light
Reuters/Hannah McKay
6/18
Husky dogs relax ahead of sledding
Reuters/Hannah McKay
7/18
International director of the Norwegian Polar Institute, Kim Holmen, relaxes with a cup of tea as he travels past the Wahlenberg Glacier. Holmen has lived in the northern Norwegian archipelago of Svalbard for three decades. He describes the changes he's seen as "profound, large and rapid." "We are losing the Svalbard we know. We are losing the Arctic as we know it because of climate change," he said. "This is a forewarning of all the hardship and problems that will spread around the planet."
Reuters/Hannah McKay
8/18
A sign warns of the danger from polar bears
Reuters/Hannah McKay
9/18
A woman poses next to a polar bear mural in town
Reuters/Hannah McKay
10/18
An iceberg floats near the Wahlenberg Glacier
Reuters/Hannah McKay
11/18
Wieslaw Sawicki holds a photograph of his son 44-year-old Michal Sawicki who was killed by an avalanche in Svalbard earlier this year. He worked as a geophysicist at the Polish Polar Research Station in Hornsund on the southern side of Svalbard. The Polish scientist and meteorologist Anna Gorska died when they fell from a mountain in May. Sawicki was an experienced mountaineer, scientist and explorer on his fifth stint for the institute in the Arctic. "Unfortunately, there was a huge snow cornice which looked like it was part of the peak of the mountain," said his father Wieslaw Sawicki, who was visiting Longyearbyen to meet with the governor of the archipelago. "It collapsed with them; they both fell into the abyss."
Reuters/Hannah McKay
12/18
Christiane Huebner plays with her dog Svea
Reuters/Hannah McKay
13/18
A pile of antlers on a ski sled
Reuters/Hannah McKay
14/18
Reuters/Hannah McKay
15/18
White wooden gravestones at risk of landslides due to the thawing permafrost underneath the ground, stand at the side of a mountain in the Longyearbyen cemetery
Reuters/Hannah McKay
16/18
A man looks at rugs for sale in a store in town
Reuters/Hannah McKay
17/18
A miner works inside the Gruve 7 mine, the only remaining operational coal mine on Svalbard
Reuters/Hannah McKay
18/18
Children play at the skatepark in town
Reuters/Hannah McKay
“I have climbed up here countless times,” said Matthias Huss, a glacier expert at ETH Zurich university who attended. “It is like the dying of a good friend.”
The Pizon glacier, pictured in Summer 2016 (top), 14 August 2017 (middle) and 4 September 4 2019 (bottom) (AFP/Getty Images)
The gathering echoes a similar event to commemorate a melted glacier in Iceland in August.
Climate change activism has been rising in Switzerland, which has about 1,500 glaciers. Earlier this year, dozens of people were arrested after blocking entrances to Swiss banks that some activists people blame for their role in financing energy projects reliant on fossil fuels.
The country famous for its direct democracy may soon vote on going climate neutral, after organisers of a campaign called the Glacier Initiative collected 120,000 signatures needed to put the measure on a ballot.
“We can’t save the Pizol glacier anymore,” said Mr Huss. “[But] let’s do everything we can, so that we can show our children and grandchildren a glacier here in Switzerland a hundred years from now.”
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