Europe's biggest glacier shrinks

Team members of a University of Glasgow expedition to study the Breidamerkurjokull glacier in Iceland

GLASGOW, Scotland -- Europe's largest glacier is on the verge of breaking up as a result of increased temperatures, experts say.

As the huge river of ice recedes, thousands of acres of once-fertile farmland are once again being exposed and re-populated after decades under ice.

But scientists say although the Breidamerkurjokull glacier, in southern Iceland, is disappearing, global warming may not be the cause -- and it may come back.

The 22km-wide glacier makes up part of the Vatnajokull, which covers an area of about 8,100 sq kms.

Breidamerkurjokull, which is its main glacier, has been studied intensively since 1903 when cartographers recorded that its tip rested only a few hundred yards from the sea.

Three surveys since -- in 1945, 1965 and 1998 -- have monitored the disappearing ice floe and it is now about five miles from the coast.

"The glacier has been shrinking for most of the 20th century," Dr David Evans, of Glasgow University's Geography and Topographical Science Department, told CNN.com.

"We reckon that it's got about five or 10 years before it recedes right back and breaks up into thousands of smaller icebergs."

He says a large depression has formed over the point where the glacier rests over an inland fjord.

Dr David Evans, of the Geography and Topographic Science Department, at Glasgow University

"Effectively, the glacier is breaking up around that hole and is slipping into the fjord. It is beginning to disintegrate and in the next few years will collapse into the water."

But he dismisses panic theories that the loss of the glacier is man-made or even permanent.

"It really is not a human-induced situation," he said. "This glacier is receding from the coast because it advanced to the coast during what is known as the Little Ice Age.

"Relatively speaking, things have become warmer, but they were warm before the Little Ice Age."

Evans says that 300 years ago the coastal land around Breidamerkurjokull was ice-free and used for farming by local people.

Then, in the early decades of the 18th century, the climate grew colder and giant rivers of ice spread out from the Vatnajokull sheet, including the Breidamerkurjokull glacier.

These moved miles down to the coast, covering pastures and crushing farmhouses that lay in their path.

"The Little Ice Age lasted almost 200 years, reaching its peak, in Iceland, in 1890, when Breidamerkurjokull got closest to the sea," said Evans.

"That mini-ice age is over now, and the climate has been getting warmer for the past 100 years. Hence the shrinking and disintegration of the glacier.

"What we are seeing now is more to do with natural evolution than global warming. In fact, we know that things have to get warm for an ice age to begin."

He says that, relatively speaking, another Little Ice Age is probably due, but not yet.

"Breidamerkurjokull still has to go quite a long way back yet to get to where it was prior to the Little Ice Age," said Evans.

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Geography & Topographic Science (University of Glasgow)
University of Iceland
Global Change

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