Throughout the Arctic region the experiences of Inuit people are reinforcing scientific findings of accelerated warming.  Louise Murray travelled to Qaanaaq, in northern Greenland to meet and hunt with local Inuit, and understand the impact of climate change on the lives of subsistence hunters and the animals that they depend upon for food.

 

In spring of 1987, Theo Ikummaq made a three month journey by dogsled from the west coast of Baffin Island to Qaanaaq in Greenland, the same journey that his ancestors had made in a nineteenth century migration.  Illustrating the pace of climate change in the high Arctic regions he says, ‘I could not make that same journey now.  To cross safely from Canada to Greenland you would have to go much further north.  The trip would also take much longer as there are many more open leads, and the ice is much more unpredictable.’  It is only safe to travel on the ice now for less than six months of the year, down from nine or ten months just a generation ago.

 

Theo’s experiences are being confirmed by scientists working in the area.  In as little as fifteen years much of the Arctic Ocean could be ice free in summer and the last time that happened was a million years ago.  For the Arctic peoples and the animals who share their home the prognosis is not good.  Dr Terry Prowse, Canadian geographer and member of the international Arctic Climate Impact Assessments group says, ‘The Arctic is the canary in the global coal mine, and its already sick.’

 

Sea ice cover in the Arctic summer reached a record low last year, due to warmer summer temperatures and  ice thickness has decreased by 40% over the last 30 years. Even if all governments are successful in meeting the targets set in the Kyoto protocol (which looks increasingly unlikely), the planet is expected to warm by 3 degrees by the end of the century.  In the polar regions, the warming will be twice that.

 

Greenland's ice cap, which contains enough ice to raise sea levels globally by 7 metres, is starting to melt and could collapse suddenly as the high Arctic reaches a tipping point. Most scientists believe that it would take hundreds of years of warm weather to melt it all but already freshwater is percolating down, lubricating the base and making it more unstable. Eric Rignot of NASA’s jet propulsion lab has been measuring the rate of loss of ice from the ice cap via satellites.  Over nearly a decade the rate of annual loss has almost doubled from 90 cubic kilometers in 1996 to 150 cubic kilometers in 2005.

 

None of this comes as any surprise to the Inuit hunters that live a traditional subsistence lifestyle in Qaanaaq in Northwest Greenland. ‘Glaciers are very noticeably receding,’ says Uusaqqak Qujaukitsoq, a Qaanaaq hunter, pointing to the western landmass. ‘Our place names are no longer consistent with the appearance of the land.  Sermtarsussuaq means the smaller large glacier that used to stretch out to sea there.  It no longer exists.’  Travel by dogsled has become much more problematic.  The Inuit need the sea ice to form, so that they can journey out on the ice to hunt the animals that must also use the ice to hunt, rest or give birth.  All the hunters agree that sea ice travel has become much more dangerous and unpredictable.

 

Lars Jeremiassen hunted for many years in the Savissivik area and accompanied a Japanese expedition to the North Pole in 1978.  ‘Forty years ago we had a safe hunting season when there was enough ice to go out on the land with the dogs from October until the beginning of August.  Now it can be as late as November, or even December before the sea is frozen enough and by early June the ice is too thin.’  A ten month sea ice season has been shortened to less than six months in less than a generation. The sun disappears on October 24th for the winter, but cracked and unpredictable ice has made hunting in the dark period much more dangerous. ‘After some people were lost a few years back, most of us stopped hunting during the dark days of winter.  These days, people are waiting until the sun comes back in February before going back out to hunt,’ says Finn Hansen a hunter for over thirty years.  New polynas, or permanent areas of open water, are appearing and making some journeys impossible and further isolating remote settlements.