Whether I’m in Greenland or not, I dream about it: Gedeon is walking around carrying huge panes of ice with a simple curved handle. He seems perplexed. He walks out into the water and lays pane after pane on the tormented sea, but the ice-windows keep breaking. Again and again he tries, but open water keeps lapping at his knees, and the more panes he lays down, the more water appears all around him.
A hunter has killed his own dogs during the night because he didn’t have the food to feed them. They lie in their harnesses, motionless. The snow that touches them has melted back an inch or so, and the bodies are outlined by pale blue ice. Beyond, the dogs belonging to Jens, Mamarut, Mikele, and Gedeon are staked out on rumpled shore-fast ice. There should be 4,000 or 5,000 dogs out here, but there are only a few hundred, their nightly chorus of howls gone almost silent.
The sea ice covering of the Arctic Ocean has declined by an area equal to Texas and Arizona combined, and the remaining ice has lost six feet of its thickness. Soon the Arctic will be open water all summer, and the elusive North Pole will be a floating nub, an arbitrary mark on a map made by the humans who have demolished its ice hold.
Hans Jensen takes me around town to say goodbye to friends: Ilaitsuk, Tecummeq, Gedeon, Marta, Rasmus, but I can’t find Mamarut or Jens. I look up as we walk and see a narrow cloud hanging over a shard of ice. The two move in unison as if married, then the cloud slides away, and under it, the ice shard melts. Toward the familiar islands, Qeqertarsuaq and Kiatak, there is now a world of imeq, open water, with no winter white for the moon to shine on. Just heat sinking down, reaching up to grab at ice from beneath.
I remember hurtling across translucent sea ice with Jens, the dogsled fishtailing as we gained speed. We were laughing and clinging to each other to keep from falling off. Now single icebergs tilt in turquoise moats, reminding me that the wobble and tilt of the Earth—the Milankovitch cycle—should be propelling us toward an ice age. Some winters have been colder the last few years, perhaps because when there has been almost no sunspot activity, the weather cools off. Plus there has been a persistent La Niña that keeps Pacific waters cool. But most winters have been erratic and mostly too warm, with the average global temperature still rising.
Toward Kiatak sea smoke curlicues into a pale sky. “The sea water is boiling,” Hans says. “That’s why there’s smoke. The water is warmer than the sky. The world is on fire. How can ice ever come back to a place like this?” he asks.
Then we do find Jens on the road to the airport. He’s been looking for me while we were looking for him. We stop in the middle of the ice road to hug goodbye. I ask how he’s feeling about things since the meeting. He looks at me and says, “I no longer want to live to be an old man.”
After checking my bags, we go back to town, since it will be another three hours before boarding time. At the shore we find Mamarut, preparing to go hunting for musk oxen. He coils his green lines and lays four harpoons under the lash ropes. He’ll travel over the ice cap to a region south of Savissivik. It is a dangerous trip to take alone, but he has to find food. As sea ice diminishes and glaciers retreat, the narrow valleys along the coast are growing more vegetation each summer. But by the time young caribou are old enough to reach these distant valleys, the grass has already reached maturity and is declining in protein. As a result, the calves do poorly.
Mamarut stands by his sled. “We are marine mammal hunters, but now we are hunting on land for whatever we can find—caribou, musk ox, birds,” he says. He looks out at the ruined ice, at the long bands of open water glittering in the sun, his eyelashes white with rime ice. Putting his hands to his head like horns, he makes a sound that’s more bovine than marine mammal. The brown mark of frostbite on the side of his face has blossomed like a dying flower. He stashes a rusty rifle and an extra pair of kamiks under the lash rope and pushes the sealskin headband up on his head—a black crown for the tragic-comic Mamarut. His wild eye looks skyward. Snow comes down like chipped light. He grabs his harpoon, jabs it into the ice, and grandly holds it at an angle like a staff.
“When we have nothing,” he says with a strong lilt to his voice, “we flourish. That’s how it’s always been for us here.”
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
HEARTFELT THANKS to the people of the circumpolar north whose voices and thoughts gave this book life in a difficult time of abrupt climate change. In Alaska, special thanks to Joseph Senungetuk, Catherine Senungetuk, Herbert Anungatuk, Winton Weyapuk, and those who lent their voices and thoughts in Wales, Shishmaref, and Nome.
In northern Russia, thanks to Andrei Volkov, biologist, guide, and enthusiastic translator, and to my Komi friends.
In Nunavut, thanks to John MacDonald, Carolyn MacDonald, Leah Otak, Zach Kunuk, Sonia Gunderson, and Mitch Taylor.
In Greenland, deep and heartfelt thanks to my friends in Qaanaaq, especially Jens Danielsen, Mamarut Kristiansen, Gedeon Kristiansen, Mikele Kristiansen, and their families, and Hans and Birthe Jensen. In Siorapaluk, thanks to Otto and Pauline Simigaq, and as always, to Ikuo Oshima. And thanks to Aleqa Hammond.
This book was made possible by a generous grant from the National Geographic Expeditions Council. Special thanks to Rebecca Martin, who makes all things possible, and to Lisa Thomas of National Geographic Books.
Thanks also to Karen Merrill and Williams College Environmental Studies, Clemma Dawsen, Brendan Kelly, and Rita and Jaimie, Pat and Mark, Thekla and Callum, and John McGough for all kinds of help and moral support.
This book is for Tom.
NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC SOCIETY EXPEDITIONS COUNCIL
NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC’S Expeditions Council, which supported Gretel Ehrlich’s fieldwork for this book, is a grant program that was launched in 1998 to fund projects involving exploration of largely unrecorded or little-known areas of Earth, as well as regions undergoing significant environmental or cultural change. Ehrlich’s investigation into the effects of climate change on peoples of the Arctic is an outstanding example of the kind of work we fund, and of a timely story that needs to be told.
Indeed, the story is central to all of the expeditions and fieldwork that the Council supports. The remarkable results of these often far-flung efforts enlighten and inspire our global audience through the coverage produced by our broad range of media—from magazines and television programs to books, Web, lectures, exhibits, and educational products.
While the Society has a 120-year history of supporting scientific fieldwork—with more than 9,000 grants awarded, largely through its Committee for Research and Exploration—new grant programs have emerged in recent years to support a variety of projects that also fulfill our mission of inspiring people to care about the planet. These programs include the Expeditions Council and Conservation Trust, Young Explorers and NGS/Waitt grants, the Legacy and Afghan Girls’ funds, and the All Roads Film seed grants, not to mention our Education Foundation grants. (Visit nationalgeographic.com for more information regarding these programs.)
Landmark among the hundreds of projects funded by the Expeditions Council is conservationist J. Michael Fay’s 15-month, 2,000-mile “Megatransect” through the central African rain forest in 1999-2000. The magazine stories—including extraordinary photographs of a deeply threatened wilderness—and other media produced inspired then Gabonese president Omar Bongo to set aside 11,000 square miles of his country’s land area as 13 national parks, which are still intact and under continued development. This is the most positive outcome we could hope to realize from our support and coverage.
More recent projects include Jim Balog’s Extreme Ice Survey, which generated time-lapse photography of glacial melt as hard evidence of global warming; Kira Salak’s adventurous journeys through Libya, Iran, and Bhutan; Tim Samaras’s first ever measurements and images inside tornados; Dan Buettner’s search for and investigation of the longest-living peoples around the planet; Dan Fisher’s studies of a remarkably well preserved baby woolly mammoth; and amazing observations of blue whale behavior led by John Calambokid
is. Also worthy of mention are the deep-sea explorations of Robert Ballard, as well as major finds by paleontologist Paul Sereno and high-altitude archaeologist Johan Reinhard. From the frigid journeys of renowned polar explorer Børge Ousland and Sylvia Earle’s Sustainable Seas Expeditions to Mike Fay’s recent Redwood Transect and the uncovering of pre-Buddhist murals and texts in the cliff caves of Upper Mustang, Nepal, by Broughton Coburn and team, one realizes that the possibilities for discovery still abound, even close to home.
A young Jane Goodall received her first grant from National Geographic in 1961 for her work with chimpanzees. At the time, Jane was unable to secure funding from any other source for her unprecedented studies. She went on to receive the largest number of grants of any individual supported by NGS, and of course became an icon in the world of conservation. Every year we continue to fund hundreds of individuals, and they continue to break new ground in the fields of research and exploration—sometimes beyond our wildest imaginings. And in fulfilling our mission, we will continue to share their myriad inspiring discoveries with you.
Rebecca Martin
Director, Expeditions Council
BIBLIOGRAPHY
GENERAL CIRCUMPOLAR
Books
Fagan, Brian. The Great Journey. Thames and Hudson, 1987.
———. The Great Warming. Bloomsbury Press, 2008.
———. The Little Ice Age. Basic Books, 2000.
———. The Long Summer. Basic Books, 2004.
Flannery, Tim. The Weather Makers. Atlantic Monthly Press, 2006.
Grim, John. Indigenous Traditions and Ecology. Harvard University Press, 2001.
McCarthy, Allen P. Indigenous Ways to the Present. Canadian Circumpolar Institute Press, 2003.
———. In Search of Nature. Island Press, 1996.
McGhee, Robert. Ancient People of the Arctic. UBC Press, 2001.
———. The Last Imaginary Place. Oxford University Press, 2005.
Meyewski, Paul, and Frank White. The Ice Chronicles. University Press of New England, 2002.
Norman, Howard. Northern Tales. Pantheon Books, 1980.
Pielou, E. E. A Naturalist’s Guide to the Arctic. University of Chicago Press, 1994.
Vaughan, Richard. The Arctic: A History. Allan Sutton Publishing, 1994.
Wilson, E. O. The Future of Life. Vintage Books, 2002.
Young, Steven B. To the Arctic. John Wiley & Sons, 1989.
Journals, Research Stations, and Websites
Bellona Foundation
bellona.no/bellona.org
A multidisciplinary international environmental nongovernmental organization based in Oslo, Norway.
British Antarctic Survey
www.antarctica.ac.uk/
A component of the Natural Environment Research Council. Based in Cambridge, United Kingdom, it has undertaken the majority of Britain’s scientific research on and around the Antarctic continent. It now shares that continent with scientists from more than 30 countries.
Canadian Ice Service
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A branch of the Meteorological Service of Canada (MSC) and a leading authority for information about ice in Canada’s navigable waters
Dansk Polar Center
www.dpc.dk/
Knowledge and service center for scientists and institutions that deal with polar research and arctic matters and for the public.
Dot Earth
dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/
A New York Times blog that reports on natural resources, the environment, climate change, and sustainability.
EarthWire UK
www.earthwire.org/uk/
A daily overview of the environment in the United Kingdom as reported in the media.
Fridtjof Nansen Institute
www.fni.no/
An independent foundation engaged in research on international environmental, energy, and resource management politics.
NASA Earth Observatory
earthobservatory.nasa.gov/
Current information about climate and the environment.
NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies
www.giss.nasa.gov/
A laboratory of the Earth Sciences Division of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center and a unit of the Columbia University Earth Institute. Research at GISS emphasizes a broad study of global climate change.
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration
www.noaa.gov
A federal agency focused on the condition of the oceans and the atmosphere.
National Science Foundation
www.nsf.gov/
An independent U.S. government agency responsible for promoting science and engineering through research programs and education projects.
National Snow and Ice Data Center
nsidc.org/
Part of the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences at the University of Colorado at Boulder. NSIDC supports research into our world’s frozen realms: the snow, ice, glacier, frozen ground, and climate interactions that make up Earth’s cryosphere.
Nature (subscription req.)
www.nature.com/nature/
The international weekly journal of science.
New Scientist
www.newscientist.com/
International science magazine covering recent developments in science and technology.
Norwegian Polar Institute
npiweb.npolar.no/english
Norway’s central institution for research, environmental monitoring and mapping of the polar regions.
Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research
www.pik-potsdam.de/
Research institute working on questions of climate change, climate impact and sustainable development.
RealClimate
www.realclimate.org/
A commentary site on climate science by working climate scientists for the interested public and journalists.
Science Daily
www.sciencedaily.com/
Breaking news about the latest scientific discoveries.
Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research
www.tyndall.ac.uk/
Organization that brings together scientists, economists, engineers, and social scientists to develop sustainable responses to climate change through transdisciplinary research and dialogue.
University of Alaska, Fairbanks
www.uaf.edu/
Alaska’s top teaching and research university and home of the Alaska Center for Climate Assessment & Policy.
University of East Anglia-Climate Research Institute
www.cru.uea.ac.uk/
Research institution concerned with the study of natural and anthropogenic climate change.
INTRODUCTION
Broecker, Wallace S., and Robert Kunzig. Fixing Climate. Hill and Wang, 2008.
Lovelock, James. The Ages of Gaia. Bantam Books, 1988.
———. The Vanishing Face of Gaia. Basic Books, 2009.
Margulis, Lynn. Symbiotic Planet. Basic Books, 1998.
Morton, Oliver. Eating the Sun. Harper Collins, 2007.
Ward, Peter. Under a Green Sky. Smithsonian Books, 2007.
ALASKA
Burch, Ernest S., Jr. The Inupiaq Eskimo Nations of Northwest Alaska. Fairbanks: University of Alaska Press, 1998.
Ellanna, Pikonganna, Muktoyuk, Omiak, Kasgnoc, Pullock, Sirloak. King Island Tales. Alaskan Native Language Center / University of Alaska Press, 1988.
Fienup-Riordan, Ann. Boundaries and Passages. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1994.
———. The Living Tradition of Yup’ik Masks. University of Washington Press, 1997.
Fitzhugh, William W., and Susan A. Kaplan. Inua, Spirit World of the Bering Sea Eskimo. Smithsonian Institution Press, 1982.
Johnson, Charlie. Nanoq: Cultural Significance and Traditional Knowledge Among Alaska Natives. Alaska Nanuuq Commission, 2005.
King Island Native Community. King Island Tales. Alaska Native Language Cen
ter, 1988.
Krupnik, Igor, and Lars Krutak. Our Words Put to Paper. Arctic Studies Center / Smithsonian Institution Press, 2002.
Krupnik, Igor, Rachael Mason, and Tonia W. Horton. Northern Ethnographic Landscapes. Arctic Studies Center / Smithsonian Institution Press, 2004.
MacLean, Edna Ahgeak. Inupiallu Tannillu Uqalunisa Ilanich: Abridged Inupiaq and English Dictionary. Alaska Native Language Center, 1980.
McCartney, Allen P., ed. Indigenous Ways to the Present: Native Whaling in the Western Arctic. Edmonton, Canada: Canadian Circumpolar Institute Press; Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 2003.
Nelson, Edward William. The Eskimo About Bering Strait. Smithsonian Institution Press, 1983.
Oozeva, Conrad, Chester Noongwook, George Noongwook, Christina Alowa, and Igor Krupnik, eds. Watching Ice and Weather Our Way. Arctic Studies Center / Smithsonian Institution Press, 2004.
Rasmussen, Knud. The Alaskan Eskimos. Copenhagen, Denmark: Gyldendalske Boghandel, Nordisk Forlag, 1952.
Ray, Dorothy Jean. The Eskimos of Bering Strait 1650-1898. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1975.
Senungetuk, Joseph E. Give or Take a Century. San Francisco: Indian Historian Press, 1971.
Senungetuk, Vivian, and Paul Tiulana. A Place for Winter. Anchorage: Ciri Foundation, 1987.
Smith, Kathleen Lopp, and Verbeck Smith. Ice Window: Letters From a Bering Strait Village 1892-1902. University of Alaska Press, 2001.
Spencer, Robert F. The North Alaskan Eskimo. Smithsonian Institution, Bureau of Ethnology Bulletin 171, 1959.
Vanstone, James W. Point Hope. University of Washington Press, 1962.
Wohlforth, Charles. The Whale and the Supercomputer. North Point Press, 2004.
NORTHWESTERN RUSSIA AND SIBERIA
Books
Anderson, David G. Identity and Ecology in Arctic Siberia. Oxford University Press, 2000.
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