Last month, a funeral was held in Oregon in memory of a glacier that has all but disappeared, with climate change accused as the perpetrator. Mourners gathered in protest of the climate crisis and asked that drastic changes be made to prevent further tragedies.
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The Clark Glacier was in the Cascade Range at an elevation of around 9,000 feet, just to the southwest of South Sister, a dormant stratovolcano.
There is no official agency responsible for monitoring Oregon’s glacier’s health, so two men set up the Oregon Glaciers Insitute in May of this year. They spent this summer survey the state’s glaciers when they discovered the Clark Glacier’s disappearance. On a wider scale, they discovered that Oregon’s glaciers are shrinking.
A glacier is dead when a number of vital signs are no longer present, such as crevasses or convex edges, which can signal advancement.
“For something to be a glacier, the ice needs to be deforming and flowing under its own weight. When that ceases to happen, it’s really just like a dead ice body.”
– OGI co-founder
Similar funerals have been held for disappearing glaciers in Iceland and Switzerland.
