It is always striking to travel across Breiðamerkursandur and witness how the Breiðamerkurjökull glacier steadily thins year by year and retreats further inland.
Here is a recording from June 16, 2024, captured at the glacier’s terminus below Útgönguháls in Suðursveit south east Iceland. It serves as a follow-up to a recording I made at virtually the same location and published online in September 2024. Consequently, the sound of rockfalls from the slopes of Útgönguháls can be heard in this recording, just as in the previous one.
Featured here is an ice wall, approximately two to three meters high at the glacier’s terminus that is melting quite rapidly. It likely extends many meters, perhaps even tens of meters down into the ground, given that it has been barely twenty years since the glacier reached a height of up to 200 meters at this spot. High up on the slopes of Útgönguháls, glimpses of an ice mass beneath the scree slopes were visible, though that ice melted more slowly due to the insulating effect of the gravel.
The background noise in this recording comes primarily from the Veðurá river, which emerges from the glacier just a short distance from the recording site.
The soundscape at locations like this near most glacier snouts is characterized by the ceaseless flow of water, though the intensity varies throughout the year. Only on the coldest days does the flow diminish enough for the sound to fall silent or become much more subdued.
(mp3 256kbps / 56Mb)
Recorder: Sound Devices MixPre-6
Mics: Sennheiser MKH 8020/8040 (Baffled Parallel AB35)
Photo: Samsung S22
Weather: Cloudy. 2–5 m/s, 11°C
Location: 64.132776, -16.222318
