Leaving Greenland Behind
The Arctic Sunrise has left Greenland behind, and is now negotiating the
sea ice that lies before our next port of call, the settlement of
Longyearbyen, on the island of Spitsbergen, in the Svalbard archipelago,
a place where the polar bears outnumber humans.
the coldest of the trip so far. Gone is the light clothing of Petermann
and Humboldt in July and August - a similar latitude, now its been
thermals, gloves and hats. The actual temperature out on deck the last few days was about -10
Celcius, not low for anyone who lives through cold winters with lower
temperatures in Canada or parts of the United States. But remember, it's
only September, and the Arctic winter is already kicking in here at the
top of the world. And the wind whipping off the ice sheet at "79
Glacier" (Nioghalvfjerdsfjorden) makes it feel a hell of a lot colder
than -10. Because of the bad weather and tough sea ice, we didn't have as much
time as we would have liked, but glaciologists Gordon and Leigh managed
to get their GPS equipment onto the glacier for more than two days –
enough to gauge its reaction to two tide cycles. Fiamma and the Woods
Hole team carried out temperature and depth surveys along the floating
ice tongue – and one day, even drilled down through the sea ice to find
out what was going on. The front of 79 Glacier is a flat, floating ice tongue, like Petermann
Glacier, where we spent most of July. However, unlike the rapidly moving
Helheim or Kangergluqussuaq glaciers that we visited in the last couple
of weeks, 79 has not yet been activated by climate change and only moves
a few hundred metres per year, yet still drains 10% of Greenland's ice;
Kangergluqussuaq glacier, in comparison moves 14 kilometres a year! 79 Glacier sits in a deep fjord, or trough, which continues 700-800km
into the heart of Greenland's Ice Sheet, well below sea level. The front
of the glacier is pinned in front on a shoal or ridge in only 100m of
water, which keeps the glacier in place. Behind that ridge, the 80
km-long tongue floats above water that is 800 to 1000 m deep. If any
major changes take place at the front of the glacier, such as it losing
touch with the ridge, this weakness will propagate inland, causing large
amounts of ice to be dumped from the heart of Greenland's Ice Sheet,
into the ocean, contributing to global sea level rise. Because it hasn't speeded up (yet), 79 can be studied in a more
‘natural' state, so scientists can understand how the faster glaciers
used to be. The problem with 79 Glacier is that it's so hard to reach;
the last team of scientists that worked on the glacier itself arrived 14
years ago! Everywhere we're gone in Greenland has a distinctly different landscape,
with the land in the north, around Humboldt, Petermann and 79 glaciers
appearing more barren and dry than the tundra around Kangergluqussuaq or
Helheim. At 79, great steep cliffs with silver rivers of shale sweep
down to the frozen fjords and sounds, and the ice sheet dips its feet in
the sea. Despite the gigatonnes of ice here, this part of Greenland is
functionally a desert, and there's not much sign of life; the sea,
however, harbours plenty; in the last few days, we've had whale
sightings (humpback and possibly bowhead), seals and some polar bears –
last night a mother and cub, and this morning a lone adult. That brings
to ten the number of polar bears we've seen on our odyssey around
Greenland so far. When I say ‘around Greenland', I'm being literal;
given the fact that the extreme north coast and north east coasts of
Greenland are hemmed in by sea ice year round, it's impossible to
actually circumnavigate the island. However, since June 29th, when we
reached the Arctic sea ice in the Lincoln Sea at 82.5 north, until last
night, we've been pretty close to circumnavigating; to go further would
need sleds and dogs. So it's goodbye to glaciers, and hello to sea ice; in Longyearbyen we'll
be picking up a new team of scientists, lead by Peter Wadhams from the
University of Cambridge in the UK. We'll be spending until the end of
September exploring the effects of climate change on the Arctic sea ice
as it reaches its annual minimum extent. Stay with us! Dave More about sea ice extent:
http://www.greenpeace.org/international/campaigns/climate-change/arctic-impacts/sea-ice-extent
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Ultima Thule Again
Well, for all of Mel’s talk about storms, the Arctic Sunrise finally encountered got a couple of real ones of the meteorological kind. Right now, we’re somewhere east of Greenland, somewhere north of Iceland in the Fram Strait. Grey sky and greyer seas surround us, and there’s a hint of iceblink on the horizon, where the sea ice is reflecting onto the clouds. As the swells drop and normality returns, Arctic Sunrise suddenly seems more crowded than usual. During the bad weather, the ship seemed deserted. Many people were staggering a swift line between their bunk and the toilet; with seasickness, even when there’s nothing left to divulge, the stomach just keeps on being interrogated about its alleged contents.
This was the expedition’s second run of bad weather in less than a week. Last Wednesday, after departing the east Greenland port of Tasiilaq, we spent the day battering head on into a force 9 gale – which even gusted up 65 knots (force 11) at times. I spent too long looking at my laptop in the morning, and nearly succumbed to the popular pastime of regurgitation; I decided it was more fun to hang out on the bridge, shooting video of waves hitting the windows, or filming inanimate objects swinging back and forth in the empty messroom. On Thursday we ducked into Kangerdlugssuaq Fjord, home to calm waters and the fastest moving glacier in Greenland. It’s the fourth major glacier on our voyage around Greenland, and I was struck by how different the surrounding environment appears to each one. Different light, different climate, different landscape, different shapes to the icebergs. I’ve been slagged off for still getting excited by icebergs, after months of looking at them. But there’s no two the same… I swear. And each glacier is different too. We spent the end of last week right up inside Kangerdlugssuaq fjord near the glacier itself, the ship completely surrounded by a stew of glacial debris. On Friday night, while the northern lights flickered dimly overhead, and no open water visible, it was tempting to assume that it was possible to step on to the ice. It was a foolish dream – we would have gone straight down through the chunks of fresh water ice, into the salty fjord water, and never be seen again. Helheim and Kangerdlugssuaq glaciers deliver about 10% of the total flow of ice from Greenland’s ice sheet into the ocean; their contribution to sea level rise – last estimated in 2006, was about 10% of the worldwide total. Greenland’s total contribution to sea level rise is thought to be about 30%, or about 1mm of the currently 3mm or so rise. Greenland’s contribution to sea level rise has doubled over the last seven years – and we don’t know what’s going to happen next. On board the Arctic Sunrise, Dr Gordon Hamilton, from the University of Maine’s Climate Change Institute, tells me that between 2004 and 2005, Kangerdlugssuaq Glacier trebled the rate at which it moves fresh water ice to the ocean. That was an increase of 5km to 14km every year, or 38 metres every day a velocity that it still maintains. You can, apparently, see it moving with the naked eye. If you wait long enough, you’ll see the glaciers dumping thousands of tonnes into the ocean. While it was previously generally assumed that the speeding up of glaciers was due to only to surface melting, it’s recently been realised that glaciers like Helheim and Kangerdlugssuaq (and Petermann and Humboldt), which terminate in deep fjords and extend several hundreds of meters below sea level, could be accelerated by the intrusion of warm subtropical water from farther south. Until now, very little was known about this phenomenon, an issue that Dr. Fiamma Straneo of Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution and her team are on board to study. Melanie has discussed the details of this scientific work in earlier blogs, so I won’t go into it in too much detail; suffice to say, much of the work carried out in Sermilik Fjord was repeated at Kangerdlugssuaq – the water in the fjord itself was studied for signs of subtropical origin. Personally, I find it fascinating that water can actually have a fingerprint, and a story to tell about its origins. Right now we’re steaming for the rather prosaically named 79 Glacier (which is actually at 79 degrees north). Arne is steering us a course that takes us north, and east of the long finger of sea ice that extends south from the Arctic Ocean, before we make our way west towards the glacier. 79 is another of Greenland’s massive glaciers, pouring out from the heart of the ice sheet, pouring out through desert-like mountains into the Fram Strait. It’s a bit like Petermann, having a long, 80km long floating tongue. It’s unlike Helheim and Kangerdlugssuaq in that, as of yet, there’s been no real sign of it speeding up due to climate change. The scientists on board plan on using 79 as a benchmark, or “control group” that will help them monitor the effects of climate change if and when they kick in, while keeping a comparison between the un-activated glacier and its companions further south. Outside the Arctic Sunrise’s office window, there’s a thick sea fog, and a slack sea. Shards of first year sea ice are drifting by. After a few months around Greenland, we’ve become used to the cold, but were spoiled by the nearly constant sunshine. Now it’s damp, icy, and we’ve not seen the sun in days. We’re wandering back towards Ultima Thule again – the Farthest North, where the lines of longitude grow closer together. Photo: The Arctic Sunrise in Kangerdlugssuaq Fjord. © Greenpeace/Nick Cobbing. Dave
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Heading South
[Our expedition leader on board the Arctic Sunrise looks back on our weeks at Petermann Glacier]
After spending more than five weeks waiting for Petermann Glacier in northwest Greenland to calve a 100km2 ice island into the sea, at around midnight Wednesday night the Arctic Sunrise began its transit down the west coast of Greenland. Our primary goal at Petermann Glacier was to document the calving of the ice island with remote time-lapse cameras perched on 1000m cliffs overlooking the glacier. Even though the ice island has not yet calved, our time-lapse cameras remain in place, ready to document the glacier's disintegration, should it happen this summer. People have been asking if I am disappointed that Petermann Glacier did not calve the large ice island while we were there. My honest answer is no. From the early stages when we first started planning this expedition, I was keenly aware that ice conditions in Nares Strait meant the ship had only a 50/50 chance of reaching Petermann Glacier in the first place. In reality, our passage north was virtually clear of sea ice – we sailed right to the top of the strait, reaching the an ice bridge holding back the Arctic Ocean's thick, multi-year sea ice on June 29th, just 445 nautical miles from the North Pole. The fact that we actually reached Petermann Glacier at all, and then had more than five weeks to conduct research into the dynamics that influence it and nearby Humboldt Glacier's sensitivity to global warming, was truly an unexpected bonus. Together, Petermann and Humboldt glaciers drain a full ten percent of the ice that flows from the immense Greenland Ice Sheet into the sea, with serious implications for sea level rise the world over. The independent science team on board gathered a lot of important data in a part of the world that is remote and challenging to reach. With the support of the Arctic Sunrise and her crew, the scientists were able to conduct glacier and oceanographic studies that will help fill the gaps in their and the greater scientific community's understanding of how Greenland's glaciers and ice sheet react to global warming. In the last seven years, the Greenland Ice Sheet's contribution to sea level rise more than doubled, due to a surprisingly rapid and unpredicted loss of ice. Against this backdrop, there is still so much that scientists do not understand about how Greenland's glaciers and ice sheet react to global warming. It's a stunning example of how the impacts of global warming on the ground are outpacing scientific models, which is the case throughout the Arctic and in much of the world. Ironically, while the Arctic Sunrise was conducting research on glaciers in northwest Greenland, the G8 met in Italy and failed to make any meaningful progress toward a climate deal. There is a huge gap between what countries are willing to do and what climate science is saying the planet needs. Not one head of state is prepared to do what's necessary to prevent climate catastrophe. At the end of the day, if the Copenhagen Treaty forged in December does not include science-based targets of at least 40 percent reductions in greenhouse gas emissions by 2020, then it will fall far short of what is needed. Even emissions reductions of 20 or 30 percent by 2020 won't cut it; it's just not possible to save the climate a little bit at a time. Obama, Merkel, Sarkozy and other heads of state can't shut their eyes and hope this issue will somehow go away. It won't. In coming years and decades we will all wonder what the heck they were thinking when they failed to address the problem with meaningful action. I know it's naïve, but I wish these heads of state could spend just one day with us on board this ship, talking with the independent science team on board about how climate change is affecting Greenland's glaciers and ice sheet, and in turn, what it means for the US and the rest of the planet. They would leave the ship understanding that anything less than science-based targets in US and global climate policy condemns the world to the worst impacts of climate change, which, by the way, will ravage their national and the global economy in incalculable ways. The economic recession that started with sub-prime mortgages and bank failures in the US will seem like child's play compared with what continued and unabated global warming will cause. The Arctic Sunrise is now heading south toward the next stages of this expedition. Independent science teams will be joining us to conduct research on Greenland's east coast glaciers as well as sea ice. We will continue our work here in Greenland, using every tactic we can to amplify the voices of scientists who are on the cutting edge of global warming research. Our hope is that both their work and voices will form part of the impetus for heads of state across the planet to take real action on global warming in the four months that remain before the Copenhagen climate talks in December. - Melanie Photo: One of the cracks in Petermann Glacier. © Nick Cobbing/Greenpeace
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Late Night With Nanuk
It’s five minutes past midnight on board the Arctic Sunrise. The sun never sets at this time of year; instead it casts long late shadows on the ice, and turns the sea water and icebergs buttery yellows and infinite blues.
Some of us should be asleep, but few of us are – we’re pulled up beside a stunning iceberg, which has become known as ‘The Donut’, thanks to the circular hole formed by an exquisite archway of glacier ice. I’m on the starboard bridge wing, looking at the Sunrise’s shadow play on the ‘berg, then reflection of that shadow in the water. Out of the corner of my eye I catch something yellow galloping along the pockmarked sea ice that stretches from the iceberg to the nearby coastal cliffs. “POLAR BEAR, POLAR BEAR” I shout into the bridge. The bridge erupts into a frenzy of activity. I stick my head back outside. The bear has stopped, maybe 50m off the starboard bow. Nanuk or Nanoq, the Inuit name for the polar bear or ice bear. Also known as Ursus maritimus, the sea bear. In northwestern Greenland, the Polar Inuit call the bear Pisugtooq; the great wanderer. To follow a bear, it is said, is to really learn something. I like what Pisugtooq means, but Nanuk rolls off my tongue a little easier. Nanuk is sitting down, waving its head back and forth as it sniffs the aroma of humans and cooking that’s coming from the big green ship. Polar bears are curious animals, and it’s a fair guess that it has never laid its brown eyes on a ship before – not many ships have ever reached these waters. I don’t know if it’s a male or female. I’d hazard a guess of male, but not from any solid evidence. Kieran forwarded me an new story earlier about a Japanese zoo where keepers spent six months trying to get two polar bears to mate, before discovering they were both female. Out of the bear’s line of sight, on the other side of the ship, we’ve a boat in the water, with Bob, Sarah, Eric, Alun and Stephen on board. They quickly choose to evacuate the boat, and get back on board the Sunrise safely. Up on around the bridge, Nick is to my left, shooting photographs on his telephoto lens. Stephen, still in his boat suit, joins the others on the bow with his video camera. The bear moves forward, wading knee deep through a meltpool. It strides confidently up to the ship sniffing the air, and looking up at the little people above. Its massive forelegs are awe inspiring, ending in paws bigger than my head – these act as paddles, snowshoes, and seal-killing tools, thanks to huge reddish brown claws on each foot. Nanuk’s coat glows golden yellow in the low sunlight. It’s commonly assumed that polar bears are as white as snow – not so. Instead, their fur – each hair of which is hollow, for insulation, is creamy if not yellow. Now Nanuk is regarding the bow of the Arctic Sunrise with something more than curiosity. The deck that people are standing on is 4m above the ice, sloping outwards. Including the gunwale, the bear is looking up at about 5m of steel, sloping out over its head. It can’t be seriously thinking of jumping onto the ship, can it? I imaginet he Arctic Sunrise arriving into port, with a pair of cartoon scratch marks descending to the waterline from an attempted ursine boarding. Nanuk seems to blink, change its mind, sniffs around a bit. I’m standing on the next deck up, so I’m close to 9m from the ice, or probably less than 8 from the bear’s head. I’m looking through my 400mm camera lens at its muzzle, which is stained red, presumably from the blood of seals. Nanuk looks back up the lens at me, the sunlight catching its eye as it regards my clicking camera with cold curiosity. Even with that much vertical height between myself and the bear, I am unnerved. A sudden movement from from a crewmate below startles Nanuk, who spins away, splashing back into the water. The minor panic subsides, and it climbs on to the ice again. Then, showing only its right side, sits on its haunches, giving the Arctic Sunrise a doleful over-the-shoulder look. Then it stretches its back ramrod straight and aims its muzzle at the blue sky above. I almost expect the bear to start howling. Instead, it seems to have turned itself into an olfactory antennae, getting its nose as high as possible. It looks dumpy – plump around its nether regions, like a bear wearing a bear suit to a fancy dress party. But Nanuk also looks graceful, regal, and at ease in its domain, and now, with its snout in the air, seems to have reached a kind of shamanic pose. Nanuk’s forepaws come down on the ice again, and it starts ambling away. Without warning, it drops down on the snow, and spends the next two minutes rolling around on its back like a playful dog on a lawn, kicking its legs into the air, rubbing its fur onto the snow. Is it trying to cool down after all the excitement or drying its fur? Is it declaring its submission to the big green rainbow monster by proffering its furry belly? Or is it simply having a good time and wants to show off to the cameras? After a few minutes of this, Nanuk sits up, looking a bit dazed and selfconscious, before wandering off across the ice. We continue watching through binoculars and telephoto lenses. A dark lump can been on the ice, between the bear and the cliffs of Cape Clay. It seems to be a ringed seal, pulled up on the ice. Nanuk goes into stealth mode. We have problems telling the bear’s pale hump from the sunlit ice as it takes a winding route through the water towards the seal. We blink, and the seal vanishes. Nanuk appears, forepaws on the ice flow, sniffing the air, disappointed. Then it wanders off, in search of new adventures, and a late supper. The ship’s engines start, and we leave. The is the bear’s territory, and we do not want to impose further. -Dave Footnote: This was the fifth of six polar bears we’ve seen since June 29th. The 1st was on the Arctic Sea ice, as written about by Melanie. We later saw a mother and two cubs in the distance on Petermann Glacier. Since the above encounter, Martin, Stefan and Geert saw a polar bear from the helicopter, clambering about on one of the McGarry Islands. Photo: Nick Cobbing/Greenpeace
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