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In this photo of August 15, 2019, a ship sails at night beside large icebergs near the town of Kulusuk in eastern Greenland. Greenland ice has melted for more than 20 years, but in 2019, it's as if the Earth's refrigerator door was left open, which means a potentially significant increase in sea level. (Photo AP / Felipe Dana)
HELHEIM GLACIER, Greenland (AP) – This is where the refrigerator door of the Earth is left open, where the glaciers are shrinking and the sea begins to rise.
David Holland, a specialist in the science of air and oceans at New York University, who follows what is happening in Greenland from above and from below, calls this "the end of the planet". It refers to geography more than the future. Yet, in many ways, this place is the writing of the warmer, wetter future of the planet.
It's so hot here, just inside the Arctic Circle, that one day in August, coats stay on the ground and that Holland and his colleagues are working on melting ice without gloves. In one of the nearest cities, Kulusuk, the morning temperature reached 10.7 degrees Celsius.
Ice Holland is on for thousands of years. It will be gone here a year or two, adding even more water to the rising seas in the world.
- See more pictures of Greenland at the end of this story
Summer this year hits Greenland hard with record heat and extreme melt. Scientists estimate that about 440 billion tonnes (400 billion tonnes) of ice, perhaps more, will have melted or become detached from the giant ice sheet of Greenland. It's enough water to flood Pennsylvania or the country of Greece about a foot (35 centimeters) deep.
In just five days, from July 31 to August 3, more than 58 billion tons (53 billion tons) melted from the surface. That's more than 40 billion tons more than the average for this time of year. And those 58 billion tons do not even count the huge calving or the hot water that gnaws the glaciers from below, which can be a huge factor.
And one of the places hardest hit by this hot summer in Greenland is here, southeast of the frozen giant island: Helheim, one of Greenland's fastest-retreating glaciers, has shrunk about 10 km since the arrival of scientists in 2005.
Several scientists, such as NASA oceanographer Josh Willis, also in Greenland, are studying ice melting from above. The glaciers here are shrinking in the summer and growing in the winter, but nothing like this year.
Summit Station, a research camp nearly 3 km high and far north, has warmed above freezing point twice this year for a record time of 16.5 hours. Before this year, this station was above zero for only 6.5 hours in 2012, once in 1889 and in the Middle Ages.
Scientists are reporting that this year is approaching, but not exceeding the extreme summer of 2012 – the worst year in modern history for Greenland, scientists said.
"If you look at climate model projections, we can expect to see larger areas of the ice sheet melt for longer periods of the year and at a greater mass loss in the future "said Tom Mote, a scientist at the University of Georgia. "There is every reason to believe that years that look like this will become more commonplace."
A NASA satellite revealed that Greenland's ice sheet was losing about 255 billion tons of ice a year between 2003 and 2016, with the loss rate generally deteriorating during this period. Almost all of the 28 Greenland glaciers identified by Danish climatologist Ruth Mottram have declined, including those from Helheim.
In Helheim, ice, snow and water seem to go on forever, encircled by bare mountains that show no sign of ice but overlap in winter. The only thing that gives an idea of the scale is the helicopter carrying Holland and his team. It is nestled in the landscape, an almost imperceptible red spot against the ice cliffs where Helheim stops and his remains begin.
These ice cliffs measure somewhere between 70 meters and 100 meters high. Right next to them, the remains of Helheim – sea ice, snow and icebergs – form an almost white expanse, with a mixture of shapes and textures. It's common for water to get stuck in the middle of this bright white, nearly fluorescent blue that looks like windshield wiper fluid or Kool-Aid.
While pilot Martin Norregaard tries to land his helicopter on the broken part of what used to be a glacier – a mixture called porridge – he searches for ice stained with earth, sign that it is firm enough for the 39, helicopter can sit there. White ice could hide a deep crevice leading to a cold, deadly dive.
Holland and his team set up a radar and a GPS to track the movement of ice and help explain why salt water, hot and once tropical, attacking the "belly" of the glacier makes bubbles
"It takes a long time to create a layer of ice, thousands and thousands of years, but they can be broken or destroyed pretty quickly," Holland said.
Holland, like NASA's Willis, suspects that warm, salty water coming in part from the Gulf Stream in North America is playing a bigger role than predicted in the melting ice of Greenland. And if that's the case, it's probably bad news for the planet because it means a faster increase in melting and a rise in sea level. Willis said that by 2100, Greenland alone could cause a rise in sea level of 3 or 4 feet (more than one meter).
It is therefore crucial to know what role air plays above and the water below.
"What we want for that is an ice cap forecast," Holland said.
In this distant landscape, the sound travels easily for miles. Every few minutes, there is a slight rumble that sounds like a thunder, but that is not the case. It's the crackling ice cream.
In the small town of Kulusuk, about 40 minutes away by helicopter, Mugu Utuaq says the winter, which lasted up to 10 months when he was small, can now be as short as five months. That counts for him because as a fourth-largest dog sled in Greenland, he has 23 dogs and must race there.
They can not run in the summer, but they must always eat. So Utuaq and his friends will hunt the whale with rifles in small boats. If they succeed, what they do not do today, dogs can eat whale.
"People are getting rid of their dogs because there's no season," said Yewlin, who bears a name. He ran a team of sled dogs for tourists at a hotel in the nearby town of Tasiilaq, but they can not do it anymore.
Yes, melting glaciers, less ice and warm weather are perceptible and very different from his childhood, said Kulusuk Mayor, Justus Paulsen, 58 years old. Of course, that means boats need more fuel to get around, but it will be fine, he says.
"We like that because we like to have a summer," said Paulsen.
But Holland looks at the Helheim Glacier from his base camp and sees the situation as a whole. And it's not good, he says. Not for here. Not for the Earth as a whole.
"It's pretty good having a planet surrounded by glaciers," Holland said.
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The Health and Science Department of the Associated Press is receiving support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute's Department of Science Education. The AP is solely responsible for all content.
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