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Global warming
triggered by our actions
Eighty-five percent of Greenland, the
world’s largest island, is covered in ice. It is also home to ten
percent of the world’s ice mass.
The Jacobshaven Glacier, at nine kilometers a year, it is
currently the world’s fastest-moving glacier. Historians and
scientists believe this mass of draining ice produced the iceberg
that sunk the Titanic ocean liner in 1912. It is also a glacier
that could contribute to sinking coastlines of major countries if
it were to melt completely.
Greenland is the fastest-warming location on the planet. The
average temperature here is four degrees Fahrenheit warmer than it
was a decade ago. If continued warming caused most of Greenland’s
ice to melt, sea levels would rise roughly 20 feet [six meters].
Scientists looking at satellites believe southern Greenland is
currently losing 25 cubic miles [104 cubic kilometers] of ice per
year.
These statistics have placed Greenland at the center of the global
warming debate.
Jorgen Peter Steffensen is a professor at University of
Copenhagen. He says, “In all humankind’s existence it has been a
basic thing of life that climate has changed.”
In Kangerlussuak, the hub of scientific activity in Greenland,
Steffensen is preparing for a summer on Greenland’s ice sheet. He
studies cross sections of the packed ice — called ice cores — that
he gathers from drilling deep inside the ice sheet. “So whatever
falls as snow on the ice cap never goes away. It just piles up.
And therefore, the ice cap, the massive ice you have covering
Greenland, is a beautiful layer cake of snowfall upon snowfall
nicely piled up over the eons.”
Summit is the tallest point in Greenland. It sits on top of 3,300
meters of ice. It is 400 kilometers from land. It is one of
several locations where ice core samples are gathered.
In this barren, frozen expanse, scientists like Roger Bales take
advantage of the pristine conditions to gather data that will help
other scientists, like Steffensen, understand the evidence in the
ice core samples. “This is a very clean station. As you know,
there’s pollution in cities but there’s also global pollution, so
we come here to one of the cleanest places in the Northern
Hemisphere to really understand what’s happening globally.”
What is happening globally over the years is that the temperature
is rising. Summit ice core samples give scientists an idea of how
fast the ice melted during certain periods, and how much carbon
and gas was in the atmosphere when the snow fell.
It might be hard to fathom that the planet is getting warmer —
while standing in sub-zero temperatures in one of the coldest
places on Earth.
But almost every scientist who works here has come to the same
conclusion, either by evidence gathered in the ice, or by data
collected by experts on the atmosphere. One of them, Greg Huey,
comments, “Global warming is a fact in the scientific community.”
What is not conclusive is whether or not mankind is responsible.
“I don’t think that the concept of global warming — it’s not
controversial in the scientific community. It’s here, people might
argue about how fast it is or what steps to take, but no one
argues that greenhouse gas emissions and the planet is warming,
and unless we want to live in a very different climate for our
children and grandchildren we’re going to have to do something
about the carbon in the atmosphere,” says Huey.
Steffensen adds, “To filter out whether this present warming is a
natural variation or is man made — that is impossible. But if
there is a very strong correlation between our emissions and the
heating we see today, so do we dare not to?”
Much of the research being conducted in Greenland today helps
provide sound, scientific evidence to lawmakers and leaders around
the world.
“We want people to know that the atmosphere is changing. We are,
we have these global atmospheric measurements and the evidence is
solid for that. It provides I think a sound basis for decision
makers on which to base mitigation measures,” Bales adds.
But what scientists like Steffensen fear most is the unknown.
“Instead of a gradual warming, we could have something terrible
happen. And the worst thing we would like now, with six billion
people in the world, is unpredictability. That would be the worst.
That is what I fear — is the unpredictability, and it could be
triggered by our actions.
 
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