Climate Change: A Greenland Perspective

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Climate Change: A Greenland Perspective

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Climate change is the alteration of temperature and precipitation patterns over an extended period of time. Across the globe, scientists are identifying climate change in relation to the greenhouse gas emissions and solar cycles. While most researchers believe that the increase of atmospheric CO2 is effecting global warming, others are endorsing the concerns of another Ice Age, which is likely to occur due to orbital variations of the Earth. In his article, Abrupt Climate Change, Richard Alley titles one section, ?Chilling Warmth,?15 which perfectly describes the angst of many people who foresee a deadly warming trend, and also the paradox of global warming causing another ?Little Ice Age.? These competing discourses are extremely pertinent to the country of Greenland, which is at the forefront of the climatic change debate.

Greenland and other Arctic countries continue to be at the head of the discussion on climate change, whether due to melting ice caps, or advancing glaciers. Our understanding of climate change across the world has been possible due to Greenland?s ice cores; proxy records, such as O18 dating, reveal atmospheric air temperatures at which the sheets of ice were formed.16 Oxygen in the ice cores can also reconstruct the history of precipitation. Greenland remains a critical story teller of cooling and warming trends, since the 1990s, when scientists first started to extract from the gigantic sheets of ice.17

Scientists who view increased CO2 emissions as directly related to a warming climate are radically concerned for the outcomes of warming oceans, rising sea levels, and higher precipitation levels. For example, in an article for Nationa...

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...ric air temperature, but in contrast to Amos? belief that Arctic temperatures in Greenland have decreased by 1.29 degrees Celsius, since 1985, Peter Spotts of The Christian Science Monitor, documents a seven degrees Fahrenheit increase in Alaska, western Canada, and Russia over a fifty year period.33

From the research that I have conducted, I have realized how integral Greenland is in the dialogue on global warming and abrupt cooling; furthermore, I recognize that climate change needs to be of global concern, not only to scientists, but to the government and all citizens; every regional climate change in the Northern Hemisphere directly influences temperature and precipitation in the Southern Hemisphere. We are all connected, and it is imperative that humans intervene and become aware of how their environmental choices may affect biodiversity around the world.

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