Drinking water in ice form
Iceland made the news recently when one of their glaciers melted away completely. They commemorated it with a plaque. This was not mere sentimentality.
On the through-the-glacier tour, the guide ended with a large map of the glacier at various times during its 5000 years of existence, and how its shape changed through the millennia. It grew for thousands of years, but today it is shrinking. At its present rate of shrinking, that cap of ice that took 5000 years to form will be gone in 200 years. Remember this is one of Iceland’s largest glaciers.
On the Great Circle tour, we visited the Gulfoss, the Golden Falls. It’s quite a sight and is beautifully presented. Wooden walkways and stairs take you out to the head of the cascade, over to a close encounter with the cascade, and down to the howling falls. After tumbling wildly down a rocky hill, the clear water puckers up and spits out into a narrow slot canyon, thundering like a forest troll. It’s a lot of water going very fast, quite spectacular.
Not many days before, it had been glacial.
And here is where sentimentality gives ground to reality. Nearly all of Iceland’s fresh, potable water comes from glaciers. As their glaciers shrink, Iceland’s water supply shrinks even as its population grows. They are not alone. Indeed, it is discomfiting to learn how much of the world’s water supply comes from shrinking glaciers and snowfields.
Lest you think that’s other people, the problem is here as well. In my home, Port Townsend in Washington state out on the northeast tippy-tip of the Olympic peninsula, our fresh water comes from snowmelt. If the snowpack in the Olympic Mountains is low or it melts too quickly during a warm spring/early summer, we go on rationing to nurse our dwindling supply, waiting for rain and snow to replenish our resources in the autumn.
Doesn’t Iceland get rain and snow? Yes, but apparently it’s spotty. During my visit, the weather was perfect every day. Our glacier tour guide said that last year the whole summer was miserable, four days of sun with otherwise cool, clammy weather that never sweetened up.
As with everywhere else in the world, you takes what you gets.