GREENLAND IS MELTING: THE IMPACT OF CLIMATE CHANGE ON INUIT CULTU AND DISPLA MENT OF LO greenland is melting
Greenland
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The line graph above charts ice mass in gigatonnes (Gt) between November and January (Greenland’s winter months), starting from 2002 and ending in 2014.
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The key below corresponds to the color of each page, helping the viewer visualize the decline in Greenland’s ice mass through the past 12 years.
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GREENLAND & ANTARCTICA 1000 to 1400 Gt
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Greenland is the world’s largest island. It is also the country with the lowest population density and one of the smallest capitals in the world. Greenland has an arctic climate with average temperatures that do not exceed 10° C (50° F) in the warmest summer months. East Greenlanders see less ice from the Arctic Ocean than earlier, and both scientists as well as tourist guides report that in certain areas of the country glacier heads are pulling back year after year.
january 14, 2003
december 16, 2002
Data from NASA’s Grace satellites show that the land ice sheets in both Antarctica and Greenland are losing mass. The continent of Antarctica has been losing about 134 billion metric tons of ice per year since 2002, while the Greenland ice sheet has been losing an estimated 287 billion metric tons per year.
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THE ARCTIC REGION IS HEATING UP TWICE AS FAST AS MAINLAND AMERICA ACCORDING TO
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The study of ice in Greenland has significance for the rest of our planet. It’s one-seventh the size of Antarctica, but because it protrudes into more temperate latitudes, it may be a better indicator of climate change than the larger landmass found in the south. Climate change presents challenges to researchers because it often concerns combinations of many interrelated processes. But Greenland may be for climatologists what canaries used to be for miners: an early warning monitor. Though only one-seventh the size of Antarctica, Greenland protrudes into more temperate latitudes, and may be a better indicator of climate change than the land around the south pole. Global ice cover acts as the planets thermostat, regulating temperature by reflecting sunlight back into space. It also holds much of the Earth’s fresh water, water that if melted would otherwise swamp what are now coastal lowlands around the world.
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GREENLAND MAY BE WHAT CANARIES USED TO BE FOR MINERS AN EARLY WARNING
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After Antarctica, Greenland’s ice cap contains the second largest mass of frozen freshwater in the world. This new research indicates enough ice loss to cause a measurable rise in sea levels. Quantified conservatively, the study indicates a net loss of roughly 51 cubic kilometers of ice per year from the entirety of the Greenland ice sheet. That’s enough to raise the average sea level worldwide about .13 millimeters per year. While that might not sound like much, consider that in the space of only a single lifetime, it’s nearly 1 centimeter of rise, and that’s only if we assume the rate of increase remains the same. Experts know there have been significant changes to the planet’s ice caps and oceans in geologically recent history. Since the last interglacial period (The Eemian) roughly 110,000 to 130,000 years ago, the sea level has risen approximately four meters. What’s important is a better understanding of how human and natural processes are conjoined to affect changes in the important ice caps of the world we know today.
LOSING 3X AS MUCH ICE
According to NASA, Greenland and Antarctica are losing three times as much ice each year as they did in the 1990s. Summer sea-ice cover is half as big as it was from 1979 to 2000, and many scientists are predicting an ice-free Arctic by the end of the decade. Not so long ago, the Northwest Passage, the storied northern route from the Atlantic to the Pacific oceans, required an icebreaker ship to navigate it. This summer, people are attempting the passage in a sea kayak.
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“The shock will be profound. But we have faced colonization, epidemics and modernization before,” she says. “The decisions we are making [to open up the country to mining and oil exploitation] will have enormous impact on lifestyles, and our indigenous culture.” “But we have always come out on top. We are vulnerable but we know how to adapt,” she said on a visit to Norway this week.”
january 14, 2009
INUIT CULTURE IS UNDER THREAT
The Inuit leader of a country with just 56,000 people who have lived in remote, scattered communities largely by fishing and hunting knows that the arrival of tens of thousands of foreign workers will be as economically important and as culturally disruptive as anything in Greenland’s history.
Climate change, she says, is placing Greenland at the heart of 21st century geopolitics. As the ice retreats, it is moving from being a nonplayer in global affairs to the center of a new international resource rush. “Climate change and this resultant new industrialization brings new risks. We must understand that the effects will be both positive and negative,” she says. Not only has the retreat of the icecap made mining feasible in previously inaccessible areas, but the dramatic melt of the Arctic sea ice may within one or two generations locate Greenland on a vastly profitable trans-polar trading route between the Pacific and Atlantic oceans. In northern Greenland traditional Inuit culture is increasingly under threat from global warming, said Lene Kielsen Holm, sustainable development advisor for the Greenland arm of the Inuit Circumpolar Council in Nuuk. The sea ice that Inuit use to hunt seals, walruses, and other animals is not staying as long as in previous years.
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“The warming of the ocean is making the ice so thin that people living from hunting are not able to follow the routes that they used to,” Holm said. “They are seeing more and more accidents.”
november 13, 2010
WILL BE DESTROYED BY THE EFFECTS OF CLIMATE CHANGE SEEING MORE AND MORE
In the Qaanaaq region of northwestern Greenland this year, hunters lost their gear and sled dogs as abrupt storms broke up the thin sea ice, Holm said. “The warming of the ocean is making the ice so thin that people living from hunting are not able to follow the routes that they used to,” Holm said. “They are seeing more and more accidents.” This village is just one of three Inuit settlements that scientists believe will be destroyed by the effects of climate change. At least eight more are at serious risk, the BBC reports. Colleen Swan, Kivalina’s council leader, said that Alaska’s native people are being forced to pay for problems they did not create. “If we’re still here in 10 years’ time we either wait for the flood and die, or just walk away and go someplace else,” Swan told the BBC.
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“THE GOVERNMENT IMPOSED THIS WESTERN LIFESTYLE ON US, GAVE US THEIR BURDENS, & NOW THEY EXPECT US TO PICK EVERYTHING UP MOVE IT OURSELVES - COLLEEN SWAN,
BIBLIOGRAPHY Folger, Tim, and Ciril Jazbec. “How Melting Ice Changes One Country’s Way of Life.” National Geographic. National Geographic, 15 Oct. 2015. Web. Kuruvilla, Carol. “Climate Change Will Cause Alaskan Village to Vanish under Water within 10 Years: Scientists.” Daily News. Daily News, 30 July 2013. Web.
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“The Greenlandic Culture and Nature.” About Greenland. Greendland, n.d. Web. “Vital Signs: Land Ice.” Climate Change: Vital Signs of the Planet. NASA, n.d. Web.
IMAGE SOURCES Daily News NASA National Geographic Rolling Stone
This book was designed by Michelle Kim in Word & Image II, Fall 2015 at Washington University in St. Louis.