Iceland unveiled a plaque to its Okjokull ice sheet on Sunday, the first of the country's hundreds of glaciers to melt away due to climate change.
Scientists see the shrinking of glaciers as one of many warning signs that the Earth's climate is lurching toward dangerous tipping points.
A ceremony to unveil the plaque was attended by scientists and locals at the glacier in west-central Iceland, which in 2014 no longer fulfilled the criteria to be classified as a glacier after melting throughout the 20th century.
"Okjokull is the first Icelandic glacier to lose its status as a glacier. In the next 200 years all our glaciers are expected to follow the same path," said the inscription on the plaque written by Icelandic author Andri Snaer Magnason.
"We know what is happening and what needs to be done. Only you know if we did it," said the inscription, directed towards future generations.
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According to satellite images from the NASA Earth Observatory, the glacier appeared as a solid-white patch in 1986, but in an image from August 1 this year, only small dashes of white ice remained.
"We were hoping that this memorial may survive as a prototype for other communities around the world who are interested in finding ways to come to terms emotionally and intellectually with the loss of glaciers as with climate change more generally," said Rice University anthropology professor Dominic Boyer.
Icelanders call their nation the 'Land of Fire and Ice' for its other-worldly landscape of volcanoes and glaciers, immortalised in literature. But the glaciers are melting and scientists say rising global temperatures are to blame.
Reuters
