"The meltdown of Greenland's way of life"

Seen from the air, Greenland's massive ice cap is clearly taking a beating.

Lakes and ponds of open water are scattered across its cracking surface, some feeding streams that vanish into moulins - drain-like cavities about 40 feet across that pierce the bottom of mile-thick ice. Approaching the edge of the ice, mountain summits poke out like islands. Glaciers tumble toward the sea, where this year they discharged ice at an unprecedented rate in this self-governing province of Denmark. Melting at the top of the ice sheet was the greatest ever recorded, 150 percent more than average, according to a new NASA-sponsored study.

"The rate of melting is just phenomenal," said Robert Correll, chairman of the Arctic Climate Impact Assessment, an international scientific monitoring project. "We're adding freshwater to the ocean at a much more rapid rate than predicted" by the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's most recent estimates, which are based on data through 2005.

Studies show that Greenland is undergoing a rapid meltdown, one with severe consequences for global sea-level rise and the 56,000 people who live on the world's largest island. Scientists report that glaciers draining the ice cap are picking up speed, while Arctic sea ice shrank this summer to its smallest extent on record, defying computer models that suggested such changes would not occur for decades....

In Ilulissat, 200 miles north of the Arctic Circle, the town's 4,500 residents have seen the changes firsthand.

The Jakobshavn glacier, a 3-mile-wide, nearly 1 mile-thick tongue of ice that pours into the sea next to the town, has been picking up speed for years. A decade ago it flowed at between 2 and 21/2 miles a year, filling Disko Bay with icebergs that, in turn, attracted tourists. This year it flowed 9 miles - 61/2 feet an hour - adding enough freshwater to the oceans daily to meet the annual needs of any of the world's mega cities, according to Correll.

The icebergs haven't harmed Ilulissat residents, who are enjoying an economic boom fueled by tourism and fishing. Local fishermen ply the waters in and around the decomposing glacial front, pulling up enough halibut to keep the town's two fish plants running round-the-clock, seven days a week.

"We fish right by the icebergs," said Karl Thumassen, a local fisherman. "It was better 20 years ago, but it's still pretty good."
The lack of sea ice is another serious matter.

No roads connect Greenland's main towns - the island is too rugged, harsh and sparsely populated to make them feasible - meaning the prime modes of travel are by air (prohibitively expensive) or sea. In winter, ship travel is dangerous, so in central and northern Greenland, most people travel across the frozen sea by dog sled.

But in Ilulissat, the sea hasn't frozen solid for nearly a decade, wiping out the livelihoods of the country's subsistence hunters and isolating thousands more throughout the long, dark Arctic winter.

"It's as if somebody came to you and said, 'We're going to take your car away in mid-September and give it back to you in May or June,' " said Minik Rosing, a Greenland-born geologist at the University of Copenhagen who discovered the earliest evidence of life on Earth in Greenland's rocks. "It's a massive disruption to the way you live and perceive yourself."

Ilulissat's 5,000 sled dogs - who outnumber town residents - have been out of work for so long, their owners have exiled them to a lonely plain on the edge of town, where they bark and howl between meals. In the far north, hunters say they have a hard time feeding their dogs, which normally dine on seal and polar bear scraps. In 2004, the government had to airlift dog food to the northern settlement of Qaanaq to prevent mass starvation...

In the far south, where a more temperate climate allows limited farming, the growing season is getting longer, and new areas are opening up for cultivation.

"It will be very exciting to see how the land will change in the next 20 years," said Tommy Maro, the mayor of Qaqortoq, the region's principal town. "Maybe we will have more sheep farmers, more green areas, more things we can grow."

Potato farming has expanded in size and area, with spuds now grown in the capital, Nuuk, which is just 185 miles south of the Arctic Circle. Near the southern village of Qassiarsuk, farmers say they succeeded in growing broccoli for the first time this year...

A milder climate, he says, will require a new generation of southern Greenlanders to take up agriculture...

As for sea-level rise, Correll said most scientists in the field would argue that it will be "the upper part of a meter" (3 feet 3 inches) this century, roughly twice the current estimates, though nobody knows exactly how the Greenland ice sheet will behave as water intrudes underneath.