Hundreds of people,have held a high-altitude funeral for a Swiss glacier “Pizol’ that has been lost to global warming.
Around 250 people including children and 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.
The glacier, in the Glarus Alps of northeastern Switzerland, has shrunk to a tiny fraction of its original size.
Scientists say the glacier has lost at least 80% of its volume just since 2006, a trend accelerated by rising global temperatures.
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.
As mourners gathered in the Swiss Alps, youth activists and world leaders are in New York to discuss climate change action at the UN.
