Last Saturday was Climate Day in Nuuk, to celebrate the tenth anniversary of the Greenland Climate Research Centre and draw attention to climate change. Everyone knows those striking images of Greenland’s melting ice, skinny polar bears, retreating glaciers. But for those who live outside the Arctic, which is almost everyone, it’s hard to relate to. So what does it mean for locals?
Sea ice is fundamental to Greenlanders. It’s used for travel, hunting, fishing. But warming oceans are melting the ice. Ninety percent of the excess heat trapped by greenhouse gases, mainly from burning fossil fuels in power plants and cars, is soaked up by the oceans. So sea ice is thinning and retreating northward. The oldest, thickest sea ice is born in the Arctic Ocean northwest of Greenland, and then peels off and migrates around to the east coast. But in the last twenty years, all of the the old, thick ice has melted. As things are going, the Arctic Ocean will be ice free, year-round, this century. And while a cruise through the once ice-choked northwest passage might be a cool holiday, it’s bad news for locals. And with sea ice thinning and retreating, people can no longer travel and hunt with their sled dogs. Without ice, the dogs have no purpose. So the number of dogs is a practical measure of how ice loss is changing people’s lives. Twenty years ago there were over thirty thousand dogs in Greenland. Today there are fewer than half that number.
Then there is the ice cap. The ice cap is losing about two hundred and sixty billion tons of volume into the sea each year, mainly through glaciers pouring off the ice sheet. Glacial movement, and retreat, is accelerating. You can see the evidence all over Greenland. Scarred rock faces, around and in front of glaciers, mark the places where the ice, now deflated and retreated, once stood. Their retreat has drastic implications for the people living on the ice margins, impacting their fisheries, which account for ninety percent of Greenland’s economy. When glaciers empty into fjords, melt water seeps down through the ice and into the deep water. This upwelling fresh water and the icebergs breaking off the glacier front mix the fjord water and bring nutrients to the surface. The result is a rich fishery. But as the glaciers retreat onto land, the melt water instead flows over land and out onto the fjord, forming a layer of cold fresh water on the surface. This layer acts as a barrier, stopping nutrients from reaching the surface. The result is no fish.
Then there are direct effects of warming and acidifying water; migrating and changing marine populations, population crashes, increased risk of keystone species-loss that may collapse ecosystems. And this doesn’t take into account unsustainable fishing practices. The irony is that Greenland – along with only twelve other nations – has not ratified the Paris Agreement.
Where does this leave Greenlanders? The same place as everyone else. Warming and ice loss, like other climate-related changes, can be slowed by reducing carbon emissions.
Change to green energies. Live locally and sustainably. Encourage others to do the same.
