Word: greenlander
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...understand what has happened to the earth's atmosphere--and, therefore, how our climate might change in the future--some ice-core scientists in the Arctic are training their eyes directly downward. It's an incredibly important job. It's also, as the participants in the North Greenland Eemian Ice Drilling (NEEM) project will attest, incredibly fun. Where else can you snowmobile all day across Olympic-quality piste, make modern art out of 200-year-old ice crystals and relax at "night" (the sun never sets during the arctic summer) with copious amounts of Carlsberg beer delivered...
...freezing, as I discover when our visiting group (a collection of journalists, scientists and Danish environmental officials) decamps from the C-130 Hercules transport plane that brought us to NEEM. It's maybe --9°C (16°F) on the ice--balmy, as far as summertime goes on the Greenland ice sheet. Dorthe Dahl-Jensen, the motherly Danish field leader of the NEEM project, greets us at the camp's main kitchen, dining room and work space: a toasty geodesic dome straight from the winter dreams of Buckminster Fuller. I quickly learn that a great deal of time...
...result of over 130,000 years of accumulated snow. Tiny air bubbles from the year the snow fell are trapped in layers of frost, and when the ice is brought back to the surface, scientists can analyze the ancient atmosphere and discover the temperature and carbon dioxide concentration of Greenland's air, say, 115,000 years ago. That's the end of the Eemian geologic period, the warm era before the earth's last Ice Age (which ran until about 11,700 years ago). We know the planet was some 3° to 5°C (5° to 9°F) warmer during...
Standing on the seemingly endless ice cap, where blinding white stretches in all directions, I find it hard to imagine ever losing Greenland. But the island has surrendered an average of 150 billion tons of ice over the past four summers, melting away like the cubes of glacier--dating back to 1816--that the scientists drink in glasses of whiskey at a farewell party. As it warms, we'll probably lose more, but the hope is that through projects like NEEM, we will finally understand our climatic past before meeting our uncertain future. The scientists here think we're running...
...early wake-up call wasn't quite necessary - our flight out was, of course, delayed by an hour. Ice-cap flights have an on-time record that makes United's look meticulous, but at least there's an excuse here. Weather in Greenland is changeable, and even in the summer, hardly perfect for flying. It's not unusual for flights to be delayed for hours, even canceled altogether, sometimes stranding people on the ice cap for days at a time. We were lucky - our plane did depart, and landed safely at NEEM some two-and-a-half hours later. There...