Greenland: roar of melting glacier sounds climate change alarm

ILULISSAT, Denmark (AFP) – Flying low over the vast, white expanse of Greenland’s Ilulissat glacier, one of the biggest and most active in the world, the effects of global warming in the Arctic are painfully visible as the ice melts at an alarming rate.

The helicopter lands on a granite cliff overlooking the Ilulissat ice fjord, or Kangia in Greenlandic, offering a magnificent, panoramic view of elaborate ice formations as they float towards the sea at a rate of two meters (yards) an hour, spilling massive icebergs into the open water.


Off in the distance, huge boulders of ice break off of the imposing Ilulissat glacier, more commonly known by its Greenlandic name Sermeq Kujalleq, creating a thunderous roar as the glacier recedes in one of the planet’s most striking examples of global warming.

“The ice in some places on the coast is now melting four times faster than before,” says Abbas Khan, a Dane who studies the movements of Greenland’s glaciers at the Danish Space Centre.

The Ilulissat glacier and icefjord have been on UNESCO’s world heritage list since 2004 and is the most visited site in Greenland, its ice and pools of emerald-blue water admired by tourists and studied by scientists and politicians around the world.

The glacier is the most active in the northern hemisphere, producing 10 percent of Greenland’s icebergs, or some 20 million tonnes of ice per day.

But the glacier is in bad shape, experts warn.

Recent estimates by US scientists who study NASA’s satellite images daily show that it is rapidly disintegrating.

AFP