(THIS ARTICLE IS MACHINE TRANSLATED by Google from Norwegian)
Reports from trappers, locals and now scientists show that Greenland is experiencing extreme changes in nature. Warmer weather causes Greenland to melt.
What climate scientists have discussed at a theoretical level about how global warming will bring about change is a reality in Greenland today. Scientists who have been labeled radical and unrealistic now get right. The Greenland inland ice melts, the glaciers melt, there is less ice on the sea, the permafrost thaws and the sea temperature increases. Global warming is already threatening the Greenlandic society both economically and culturally.
This summer, scientists are on a cruise around Greenland to gather evidence of what global warming is doing to nature on the world's largest island.
The report "Impacts of a Warming Arctic", which the Arctic Council had prepared in 2004, states that "the Arctic is now experiencing some of the fastest and most threatening climate changes on earth".
To document the conclusions in the report, Greenpeace has gathered established researchers from the USA and the UK on board the "Arctic Sunrise" and taken them on a two-month round trip along the Greenland coast. The journey has now come a little over halfway. The goal is to gather what they can from information about the climate situation in Greenland. During the trip, films will be made, interviews will be conducted and samples will be taken to show the world the situation in Greenland.
The temperature increases
Since 1990, the average temperature in Western Greenland has increased in several places by around five degrees. But this increase cannot be attributed solely to the man-made climate challenges.
Research leader Eigil Kaas at the Climate Section of the Danish Metereological Institute says to the weekly newspaper Sermitsiaq that there are three processes that control the Greenlandic climate:
1. Variations in the oceanic heat transport in the northern Atlantic. This particularly affects Greenland and the Arctic.
2. Natural influences from volcanoes and the sun.
3. The man-made changes.
Eigil Kaas points out that the Greenlandic climate has been subject to major fluctuations over the past 125 years. It is this period that has good data from Greenland.
Greenland had a warmer period from 1930 to 1950. Then it got colder, and then warmer again in the nineties. The recent heating season has affected both eastern and western Greenland.
Researchers, including Eigil Kaas, believe that we humans must be blamed for at least a couple of the increased degrees in Greenland over the last 30-40 years. But much indicates that nature's own mechanisms have counteracted even stronger heat in Greenland and the Arctic. Scientists believe that up to 1990, nature was able to resist human-made changes, but that nature over the past fifteen years has not managed to cool down in the same way as before.
Serious threat
The greenpeace ship "Arctic Sunrise" started its voyage around Greenland in East Greenland on the first of July. The research cruise started in the Northwest Fjord at Illoqqortoormiut and will end in Northwest Greenland at Qaanaaq, or the American Thule base as the place is better known.
Researchers are getting eyewitness accounts from locals about what's happening in Greenland. In Illoqqortoormiut, the mayor, Erling Madsen, could tell the researchers that the city has seen visible changes in the last five to six years. The icebergs that have usually been visible from the city throughout the summer are now disappearing as early as July. These are icebergs that are broken by the glacier at the bottom of the fjord. The fact that the ice has disappeared means that the local trappers can no longer go hunting for the fjord because the animals that accompany the icebergs have also disappeared.
The glaciologists aboard the Greenpeace ship are now comparing ice samples from this summer to samples taken over the last 30 years.
Early spring
Researchers have also visited the Zackenberg research station in northeast Greenland. Zackenberg, the world's only high-arctic research station, was established ten years ago. In recent years, researchers have registered a number of major changes in nature, including record high spring temperatures in recent years.
One of the researchers at Zackenberg, Hans Meltofte, has visited Greenland regularly since the 31s and has registered a number of serious changes. Among other things, he writes in a report from this spring that he already noticed in the plane on the way to Zackenberg that spring had come very far on XNUMX May. He says that out of the eighteen springs he has spent in Greenland since the XNUMXs, he has never experienced such drastic changes as the last four years.
Fast meltdown
The ice sheet is in full swing. And it goes fast, actually ten times faster than scientists have so far thought. The inland ice, measuring 1,7 million square kilometers, is melting at the edges.
The American Space Research Institute NASA has been following developments in Greenland for many years. They have estimated the melting from the glaciers along the edge of the inland ice to around one meter a year.
Senior scientist at Greenland Geological Survey (GEUS), Carl Egede Bøgild, has developed automatic measuring stations. And Bøgild's results surprise scientists, because the meltdown turns out to be ten times faster than what NASA had come to.
Carl Egede Bøgild tells Sermitsiaq that the surveys they have done show that the glaciers at the edge of the inland ice become ten meters thinner each year.
This meltdown also means that the glaciers retreat. An example is the Sermilik glacier in southern Greenland, which over the past 15 years has retreated five kilometers and has become 150 meters thinner in height. It simply shrinks into both width and height. Glaciologists believe that the fastest meltdown occurs in the northeast and northwest of Greenland.
Carl Egede Bøgild says that the meltdown is part of a very complicated interaction with the climate, and that the inland ice is reacting slowly to the climate change that is happening in the world. The researchers at GEUS believe that only half of today's meltdown can be linked to today's global warming. The other half comes from earlier hot periods.
Increases speed
The researchers at GEUS point out that the inland ice will not melt evenly. They point out that if the average temperature in Greenland increases by more than 2,7 degrees, a self-accelerating meltdown will start.
According to Egede Bøgild, this is the most startling thing in the latest research. And he emphasizes that this acceleration will continue even if the temperature and climate stabilize. Most climate scenarios show that the regional temperature fluctuations in the Arctic are now above 2,7 degrees. And if we look at the conclusions in the report "Impact of a Warming Arctic", we can expect that the Arctic will be between four and seven degrees warmer over the next hundred years. Climate scientist Robert Corell believes that the Greenland ice sheet may have melted over the next 200 to 400 years due to global warming. Previously, researchers have estimated that it will take at least 1000 years for the Greenlandic ice to melt.
In early September 2004 there was a big party in the Greenlandic tourist town of Ilulissat. The reason was that the natural phenomena in the area, which include Sermeq Kujalleq (Jakobshavn glacier) and Kangia (Jakobshavn Glacier), were included in the UNESCO World Heritage list.
But it may have been the last minute. The glacier may be losing power.
Within a few years, the glacier front has receded for several kilometers. Sermeq Kujalleq is known for producing the huge icebergs one can see in the Disco Bay. There was also an iceberg from Sermeq Kujalleq which was the reason why the Titanic crashed in 1912.
If the glacier does not pick up again, there is a risk that in a few years it will stop producing the giant icebergs. For many years, Sermeq Kujalleq has moved forward 34 meters a day and has calved around 50 cubic meters of inland ice. For more than fifty years, the edge of the glacier has remained roughly in the same place. But now it is retreating with rapid speed.
The glacier began to retreat in earnest in 1997. Compared to observations from the sixties, the glacier in 2003 had withdrawn at least 11 kilometers. Since 2003, the glacier is supposed to have retreated even further, and there are observations suggesting that Sermeq Kujalleq is retiring on the mainland. According to senior scientist Ole Bennike at GEUS, it is very likely that what happens with the glacier can be linked to global warming.
The shrimp will disappear
The sea west of Greenland is getting warmer. In 1990, the average temperature at Fyllas Bank (outside Mid-Greenland) was one degree. Surveys in 2004 showed that the temperature has risen three degrees. At the Greenland Institute of Nature, one is not sure what is the real reason why the sea has become warmer. According to fisheries biologist Marie Storr-Paulsen at the institute, the reason is most likely that the Gulf Stream is now going somewhat further north than before.
The sea temperature is crucial for what is found in fish and other marine life. Today, the Greenlandic economy is almost completely dependent on the income from shrimp fishing in Greenlandic waters. With increased temperatures, the shrimp will disappear. In that case, the Greenlandic fishermen can hope that the cod will return.
