07.02.15 - Global warming with focus on Greenland

IPY - INTERNATIONAL POLAR YEAR, MARCH 2007-2009

This enables a full two-year cycle to be followed with coverage of both the Arctic and the Antarctic featuring more than 200 scheduled projects involving several thousand researchers from more than 60 countries.

Many researchers are expected to visit Greenland during the two years in which the International Polar Year is due to run. Not only will climate change be investigated, but a large number of physical, biological and social themes are also on the researchers' agenda.



Less sea ice today than in the 1990s
In Greenland the research and its results are eagerly awaited; many Greenlandic fishermen are already experiencing the difference between ‘then' and ‘now' in their everyday lives. Whereas earlier they fished from boats in the summer and through holes cut in the ice during the winter, it is now possible to fish from boats all year round at several places in Greenland. In large areas of Disko Bay, where until the 1990s there was sea ice during the winter months, there has not been any permanent sea ice during the last 10 years. 

Al Gore's film, ‘An Inconvenient Truth', has certainly also meant that more people have become aware of the consequences that radical changes in the Arctic climate may have.

However, perhaps the increased focus is due to the fact that thanks to news coverage from every corner of the globe, we have seen freak weather phenomena such as hail in California, hurricane-strength storms in Europe, snow in Greece, etc.

Still many questions to be answered
One must therefore hope that the International Polar Year provides answers to some of the important questions that the world is asking: Is the Ice Cap really melting or is its thickness still increasing so much on the east coast and in the middle that its respective rates of growth and melting actually cancel each other out, resulting in a status quo? If the entire Ice Cap melts, how much will the level of the world's oceans rise? Which positive effects are derived from a general temperature increase? Will farming, for example, once again become a viable means of living for farmers in Greenland - as indeed it was during the Viking Age, when the country was christened "The green land".

IPY will hopefully contribute with new knowledge with regard to similar questions - a knowledge that will be able to provide the basis for any decisions concerning the environment in the years ahead.

Read more about International Polar Year at: www.ipy.org