Climate change: Grönland’s climate gap – and what Trump has to do with it

The ice at the end of the world melts and it melts at a record pace. Karl Sandgreen saw it disappeared with his own eyes. “Everything changed after 1997,” says the 45-year-old from the West Grönland town of Ilulissat. Before that, the sea ice covered the bay from Ilulissat until the end of May. “But after 1997 it disappeared.”

Sandgreen’s homeland is in a way located on the front of man -made climate change, which is progressing much faster in Greenland than elsewhere in the world. In Ilulissat, icebergs up to 100 meters high, which calves from the nearby glacier Sermeq Kujalleq and then slowly drive into disco bay in the Ilulissat Eisfjord and from there continued towards the open sea. It is a quiet spectacle that is extremely impressive, but also scary, as it makes the consequences of a warmer world aware.

The Sermeq Kujalleq is one of the most active glaciers in the world. In the course of global warming and the associated melting glacier, he has withdrawn by more than 40 kilometers since 1850. This development has accelerated drastically since the turn of the millennium.

Toppolitician from all over the world got an idea of ​​climate consequences on site in Ilulissat, and Chancellor Angela Merkel with her then Environment Minister Sigmar Gabriel in 2007. Sandgreen saw her all, but the Chancellor particularly impressed him. “It did not appear like other politicians, but very quietly and very modestly,” says today’s head of the Eisfjord Center, an information center within sight of the colossal icebergs.

According to a study, the Arctic, in which Greenland is predominantly, has warmed up almost four times as quickly as the rest of the earth in the past decades. This has global and local consequences: While the global sea level through the ice melting in Greenland, people have to adapt to a new reality on the largest island on earth on the largest island. At the same time, climate change goes hand in hand with growing economic ambitions, which are also reflected in the ownership claims of US President Donald Trump.

“The decline in the ice means a new chapter for Greenland,” says climate impact researcher Pelle Tejsner from the Greenland University Ilisimatusarfik.

All Greenlanders feel the climate change, and yet they are in a conflict: some are affected by the negative consequences in their everyday life, others see mostly positive effects. It is all the more dependent on the ice for food procurement, the more they consider climate change than negative development, says Tejsner.

In addition, due to the increasing unpredictability of the weather, there would be particularly worries in the north of Greenland. “People can no longer read the weather as precisely as before,” he says. “You cannot assess whether it is still sure to break up for the seal or whale hunt.”

In the southern Greenland, on the other hand, there are now better conditions to grow potatoes and vegetables, for example. Such products usually have to be delivered expensive from Denmark, the prices for this are correspondingly high in the Greenland supermarkets.

Fewer dogs, more fish

In Ilulissat, Fischer reports that the sea ice once no longer wore its dog sleds used in fishing and hunting. Therefore, there are thousands of dogs less in the 5,000-inhabitant location today-but much more boats, with which the fishermen now get a much higher catch of halibut than before.

Another positive effect, according to the sand green, is that supply ships can come to Ilulisse almost all year round. “When I went to the supermarket as a child, sometimes they had no cheese, no milk, no eggs. Some shops were completely empty at the time.” It is different today.

At the same time, there are stronger storms that can trigger violent waves on the coasts. A friend of him lost his house in such a storm three years ago, says Sandgreen. “We have never experienced that before.”

He is concerned that climate change could lead to an accumulation of tsunamis such as one in Northern Greenland 2017. And a museum in Ilulissat should soon have to close because the permafrost underneath thaws very quickly and the building is absorbed, fears sand green. The thawing had resulted in earth’s earth in the region, which he had never seen before.

At the same time, climate change for Greenland means that base treasures are accessible and once frozen shipping routes can be passed at least in summer. The number of passing ships in the Arctic has increased by 37 percent within a decade, the distance they have covered there by 111 percent. The port of Nuuk could become a more important transshipment point and a source of income for the Greenland economy.

If the path will also be released from the northwest to the northeast passage in the future, this could shorten the travel time between the ships between Europe and Japan or China compared to the trip through the Suez Canal from 22 to about 10 days. It is not surprising that China has been trying to get a foot into the Arctic door for years. It is obvious that Trump wants to prevent something from a military and economic perspective.

However, even greater hopes are placed on the raw materials of the island. Scientists – and the world powers – already see them in tremendous potential.

“Greenland is like a confectionery shop for rare earths,” says Tejsner. Anyone who secures the Greenland mineral deposits can become Big Player alongside the world market leader China. “The Arctic has always been about that: it is a race for resources,” says the researcher. Climate change ultimately accelerated this race. “He has opened the possibility window: the ice melts and new country opens up.”