LONDON (CU)_The much anticipated Conference of the Parties this year, which will be hosted by the United Kingdom in Glasgow, has been billed as a last chance for world leaders to come together and take collective action to limit global warming well below 2°C and pursuing efforts to limit it to 1.5°C. Political leaders, policy makers, climate experts and environmental campaigners have been eagerly awaiting the summit following a recent report published by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which painted a grim picture regarding the ongoing climate crisis.
Accordingly, a group of scientists have proposed a previously unnamed glacier in West Antarctica to be called the Glasgow Glacier in honour of the city’s hosting of the COP26 climate meeting. Eight other glaciers nearby will also be named after cities where important climate policies were agreed or climate reports were published. They include Geneva, which hosted the very first climate conference in 1979, as well as Paris, where the first-ever universal, legally binding global climate change agreement was adopted.
The 100km-long ice stream, which will be named after Glasgow is located in a region of the White Continent that has been rapidly melting by warm seawater. The idea behind naming it after the Scottish city is for it to be a symbol of what was at stake at the climate summit over the next couple of weeks.
According to Heather Selley, who monitors the glaciers using satellite imagery, if the international community is to continue on its current emissions path, we’re heading for 2.7°C of warming by the end of this century, which would have deadly consequences such as floods, cyclones and droughts.
“It’s now up to us to decide whether this is the point where humans step up and try to address climate change, or whether it represents a downward spiral with continuing reliance on fossil fuels and the pumping of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere,” the Leeds University and Alan Turing Institute researcher told BBC News.
