The Arctic Sunrise is now making its way to the East Coast of the United States to spread the word about the dangers of global warming and push for America's first offshore wind farm.

We'd like to invite you to come onboard and experience a Greenpeace ship for yourself. You can meet the captain and international crew and hear firsthand what life is like campaigning on the open seas.

Stay tuned.

Map of places we visited in Greenland.

This will be my last update for Project Thin Ice. The ship is taking our message to Canada, first, and then the U.S. This map shows where we have been in Greenland.

We can't all do everything, but we can each do something. I've spent the last two months doing my small part to get the word out, and I hope people have learned a little about Greenland and global warming. Now I'm heading home to Washington, DC. The trip has been fantastic, and part of me wishes I could stay on board. Mostly though, at this point I am just looking forward to going home.

When I get there, I'll still take part in the Project Thin Ice contest, and I'm sure come visit the ship when it's in town.

Keep watching this space though, because you'll hear more from the crew and new folks joining the ship in Canada. They'll be highlighting some of the good work being done to move towards renewable energy, and away from fossil fuels and nuclear power.

Despite their new rhetoric, the Bush administration seems just as determined as ever to block any meaningful progress on energy issues. But more and more I am convinced that is the will of the American people, many of whom are hard at work building wind farms, investing in solar panels and generally showing the world we are ready, willing and able to pull off an energy revolution.

- Andrew

I am a lucky woman. Somehow this year I have managed to work first in Antarctica on a vessel doing marine science and now in the Arctic. The first thing I noticed as we got into Arctic waters was just how different the birds are here. I am used to albatrosses and petrels, and the occasional porpoising penguin, but here almost everything is different. Instead of penguins there are different species of auk. These birds have ridiculously small wings that beat in a blur. Around Iceland we would see puffins trailing fleshy red feet as they flew.

Once we got to Greenland we saw thousands of Small Auks around Scorsbysund - these little birds would perch on the sea ice, diving as the ship approached. On calm days we could see their flight under the water. Guillemots, another type of auk, are also seen along the east coast...for the birdos we were mainly seeing Brunnich's guillemot, but I also saw a couple of Black Guillemots.

Day to day we would be visited by Northern Fulmars, which look slightly seagullish but glide catching the updrafts from waves like a small albatross. Black-legged kittiwakes, the most common gull in Greenland, have also kept us company. Occasionally we have seen a beautiful pure white gull, the Ivory gull. There is also the slightly darker and stockier Glaucous gull.

Close to land, even in the densest fog, we have been escorted by long-tailed skuas which feed largely on lemmings.

But, I suppose for sheer endurance my favorite has to be the Arctic turn. This little bird looks fragile with streaming tail feathers. Amazingly it migrates from the Arctic, where it breeds, all the way to Antarctica, leaving here in August or September and returning in May or June.

- Cath

[Photo - A Northern Fulmar]

We issued a press release today about our new images documenting the effects of global warming, such as melting lakes, that we are encountering in Greenland.

View images of crew and scientists measuring "melt lakes".

We arrived yesterday in Ilulissat, where Ministers from more than 20 countries were wrapping up their three-day discussion on the threat of climate change and what to do about it. I went to the press conference, and listened to a panel of Ministers who were very pleased with themselves and all expressing optimism about the meeting's outcome. It has been no secret that the rest of the world is concerned with the attitude of the U.S. government towards the Kyoto Protocol. They all realize that we are running out of time if we are to avoid the worst consequences of global warming and the resulting climate changes.

Greenland is a perfect backdrop for discussing the urgency of greenhouse gas reductions. As we have documented and learned in the last two months, in this part of the Arctic, warming is already negatively affecting Greenlanders. The Greenland Ice Sheet may be melting its way out of balance, with global implications for sea level rise.

We sent letters and some of the results from our tour here to the Ministers, hoping that the result of the meeting would reflect the urgency of the situation. Unfortunately, I found myself leaving the meeting deeply concerned about the speed (or lack thereof) of political action.

I have been involved in international climate negotiations for many many years and have learned to "read the code" embedded in political documents. They all sound as if some meaningful action has been agreed to, but for those of us used to reading the underlying code, it becomes very evident when one looks underneath euphemisms that there is still no agreement to save our climate from ourselves.

The Danish environment minister summarized the results of the meeting in a two-page document. The crucial term "greenhouse gas emission reductions" is suspiciously absent.

One of the paragraphs states that the scientific debate is no longer about whether climate change is happening or not, instead it has shifted to figuring out how best to grapple with the problem. The shift is hailed as a milestone in politics. But that had already been agreed in Kyoto in 1997, before the Bush Administration contested it. It has taken an additional eight years to reach the same conclusion once again, a problem most of the world attributes to the Bush administration's adamant denial that the science of climate change is conclusive.

It has become obvious to me that in 2005, the U.S. changed its tactic from denying the problem exists, to blocking meaningful action by promoting a lax "do what you want, when you want, if you want" type of regime.

On my way back to the Arctic Sunrise my mind wandered to all the signs of climate change we have observed in the last two months and the threat of catastrophic consequences should we be unable to stop the Greenland Ice Sheet from melting. I thought about Noah's ark and the great deluge. In the context of global warming, the Kyoto Protocol can be seen as that ship that can save us from the flood. And instead of coming on board, the U.S. is now trying to sink it.

We can't let that happen, we just cannot afford to let them get away with it. That is why even after our tour in Greenland is now finished for this year, our work will continue.

- Martina

Out on the Greenland ice sheet, the first melt lake we chose for measuring is about 4,600 feet (1,400m) wide, and drains via a shallow channel ending in a waterfall down a deep hole a bit bigger than John and Jason's small gray dinghy. The ice sheet is more than half a mile (1000m) thick here, and the water probably goes all the way to the base of it. Anything going in that hole is on a one-way trip, which explained the enthusiasm that John and Jason put into their paddling.

Despite their efforts, though, the wind and current took them closer and closer to the mouth of the fast moving outlet stream. Eventually, John gave up. He stepped out of the boat into the ankle high water, and dragged it back to shore. This was not going to be a day for dry feet.

John and Jason relaunched the boat farther from the mouth of the draining stream, and where the slope is a bit deeper, started its four horse power motor and got on with their job.

What you might not know about glaciers and ice sheets

This is the thing that a lot of people don't know about ice sheets and glaciers: the ice actually moves. Where I was standing yesterday, at the melt lake, the ice is flowing towards the coast at about a foot (30cm) per day. If I was very very patient, and long lived, I could have stood in the same spot on the ice and in only a few thousand years I'd have reached the sea. That is, of course, assuming the ice sheet and outlet glaciers still exist by then - a prospect that global warming is making increasingly unlikely.

It's long been known that melt water production (surface melting) coincides with valley glaciers speeding up. As far as anyone knows, the melt water from the surface finds it way down to where it lubricates the base of the glaciers - causing the ice to slide faster downhill. In 2002, research was published showing that this same acceleration occurs inland with the ice sheet itself.

The ice here tends to eventually make its way out to sea, but is also replenished by winter snow. The snow builds up, compacting into hard ice. Ironically, heating the atmosphere is both increasing melting, and causing more snowfall (because warmer air holds more moisture). On the balance though, it is clear that the ice sheet is losing mass overall. Satellite images show that it is disintegrating at its edges. And Jason's research has show that surface melt water production has increased by 30 percent over the last 17 years.

How we got here

One of the big questions remaining is how much all of this additional melt water will speed up the ice draining out to sea. For this, more needs to be known about surface melt water production, and melt lakes.

Under the ice sheet are ridges, valleys and mountains. These topographical contours are mirrored by the ice above (only smoothed out a bit). The melt lakes that form in these depressions cover the spectrum of blue - from light blue at shallow edges to dark blue chasms - and actually stay in place as the ice flows past and under than.

Leigh, one of the University of Maine scientists on board for the first half of our Greenland tour, emailed us with the idea that if we could measure the depth of a melt lake, maybe the color of the water could be matched with its depth.

Jason, who has spent much of his career studying melt lakes, took to the idea. Working with the crew, he developed how to implement it. Our first plan was to dangle a depth finder from the helicopter, but that proved impractical for the precision and number of measurements needed. So we rented an inflatable dinghy small enough to be deflated and carried in the helicopter.

On site, the little boat was inflated, and survival gear stashed on shore. While John drove the dinghy, Jason matched positions from a handheld GPS to measurements taken with the depth sounder. To do one lake this way took all day, but they were able to get over 300 measurements.

At the end of the day, they deflated the boat and stashed it in a small ice cave. This morning, Jason went back out with Hettie, our second mate. Eric (deckhand/explorer) also went along to provide logistics support (specifically - he inflated the boat and helped get the gear positioned for the second lake).

After a second hard day of work, Jason feels he has enough data to create a rough model translating melt lake color into depth. Using this model with satellite images he hopes to estimate the amount of melt water contained in lakes on the entire ice sheet. This new observational methodology will help him, and other glaciologists, further their research into how surface melt water production is changing over time, and what the implications are for the fate of Greenland's ice sheet.

We'll keep doing our part by bringing you news from the frontlines of climate change, but we need you to join us in action. Everyone needs to pitch in, but if you're in the U.S. (the world's biggest global warming polluter per capita) your help is especially needed.

- Andrew

It's Saturday and we are anchored in a lovely bay we've nicknamed "Pete's Haven" after the first mate. We are east of Disko (every time I say "Disko" I move my arm like John Travolta in "Saturday Night Fever") and Arveprinsens islands, it was a short transit of about five hours last night from Ilulissat to get here.

Pete's Havn is really lovely. The ship is located 2.5 nautical miles (4.6km) from Eqip Sermia, a glacier that flows out from the Greenland Ice Sheet into the bay. Even from here the glacier looks formidable. Jason Box, the scientist on board, says the glacier's calving front is 330 feet (100m) high in some places. Yowza. Between the ship and Eqip Sermia lies a nunatak: a rocky point that once poked out from a glacier. The nunatak near us is now an island, but at some point I guess this entire bay was filled with glacial ice and only the top of the island stuck out. The land near Eqip Sermia is barren but the land closest to the ship is covered by green tundra, testament to the influence of glaciers on the landscape.

Last night Hughie flew a reconnaissance flight to check out the melt lakes and other structures on the ice sheet so we could then make a plan on how to best to measure their depth and document them. Jason went along with him and came back with some pretty incredible pictures taken on his small digital camera through the helicopter's plexiglass windows. This part of the ice sheet is riddled with melt lakes, rushing rivers and moulins (a moulin is a large hole where a meltwater river disappears into the bowels of an ice sheet or glacier). You wouldn't think that an ice sheet would have so much moving water on it. The lakes are very striking to look at, much like Mono Lake or the Dead Sea in the middle of the desert. I'm confident we'll be able to document them in a way that will explain to the rest of the world the compelling nature of this huge meltwater system in a place that we all think of as frozen solid all the time. I mean, who would think it'd be possible to stand on the Greenland Ice Sheet with a six km wide melt lake or roaring river nearby? I can't think of a better visual for telling the story of how climate change is affecting the Greenland Ice Sheet.

Our plan today was to begin flying people and gear up to the ice sheet at 9:00 a.m. and use a small inflatable boat and a fish finder to measure the depth of each lake. The depth measurements could then be compared with the color of the lakes in satellite photos, giving scientists a way to approximate the volume of water held in the lakes. This is important because as the melt lakes drain they deliver water and a warming signal into the glacier's core. Some of the water winds up at the base of the glacier where it lubricates and hastens the glacier's flow from the ice sheet into the sea, where it then calves into icebergs.

When we got up at 7:30 a.m., it was clear and calm outside – perfect weather for flying. But a little past 8:00 a.m. catabatic winds started flowing off the ice sheet and by 9:00 a.m. the winds were a steady 30 knots with gusts to 40+ knots (74 km/hr). Hughie could have flown up to the ice sheet, but it would have been difficult and dangerous to deploy the equipment and make measurements in that kind of wind.

So we spent the day waiting, waiting, waiting for the winds to die down, but it's 9 p.m. and they're still blowing with a vengeance. There won't be any flying tonight because there's only about an hour and a half of good light left. Catabatic winds die down in the evening, or so I'm told. I don't completely understand how they work but they seem to be fueled by cold winds on the ice sheet and changes in temperature caused by the shift between day and night. Hopefully the winds will die down by tomorrow morning and we can get an early start. Our itinerary has a lot of 'weather days' built into it, but I always thought they would be used for delays caused by fog and ice. I never imagined our work being delayed by catabatic winds. The winds have an odd feel to them because the sky is clear and blue, whereas the wind is what I'd normally associate with dark skies and horizontal rain. The ship has been swinging 'round and 'round on the anchor chain, it's almost dizzying.

Today is John's 42nd birthday and as part of the celebration, Martin and Isha made him a cake in the shape of Greenland. They baked a sheet cake, cut out the shape of the country and then used cut away pieces of cake to form mountain ranges and islands. A thick layer of chocolate icing covered the cake and whipped cream was the ice cap. A small wooden Arctic Sunrise used to track the ship's location on a world map in the messroom was placed in a "bay" on the cake, along with 43 candles (one for good luck). It's the most amazing cake I've ever seen, and the most delicious country I've ever eaten. I had a piece of Scoresby Sound, Faye and Hettie ate Disko Island, and the Birthday Boy himself demolished Thule, where a "Star Wars" radar station is located, in a mere three bites. The cake was unveiled not even two hours ago and when last I looked, our unregulated addiction to chocolate (1/2kg in the cake, 1kg in the icing) already resulted in destruction of 2/3 of the country.

Signing out from the Greenland lake district,

- Melanie

It was one of those few best days, a day that was like two or more good ones combined. Later, I found myself thinking, was that really today or yesterday? This life is full of wonder. Greenland is a spectacular place.

Helicopter flights took us over spectacular scenes, where colors and scale defy comprehension. One moment you're thinking, 'that looks just like the Caribbean', then you're jarred back to the Arctic by massive flowing ice! This visual stimulation combined with the genuine satisfaction of completing a goal that began so recently as a humble idea. We had just deployed two automatic digital cameras, 'looking' at huge glaciers. This morning, we had been waiting through a lengthy application process for permission to land and leave equipment in this World Heritage site. And just as we were losing hope, the final fax came though, within moments we were starting the engine to go.

Arriving at the first site, the highest/furthest east land possible, beholding a vast sea of tortured ice, Martin, Hughie and I had the equipment up and running without a hitch. We actually couldn't afford a hitch. We had a maximum of 55 minutes for the work. But, it happened to be t-shirt weather, radiant sun, just enough wind to thwart mosquitoes. Landing at this place felt like what I imagine landing on Mars would be like, and the equipment like an alien observer.

The flight to the next site brought us along the 'ice front' of this massive Kangia/Jakobshavn glacier. But what a mess it looked, having retreated so much in only the past few years. There is no longer a well-defined ice cliff that drops down to water. All you see now is a wreckage of ice with a cliff (ice front) that comes and goes. It seems this glacier has retreated to or even behind its 'grounding line', meaning it no longer has a floating part. This is a huge departure from how I remember the glacier from my first flight over it in 1994. Since then, I've seen it from the air almost each year. I remember how in 2003, we did not recognize the glacier. It had changed in its otherwise fractal appearance of somehow organized crevasses and seracs to practical chaos, wreckage, smithereens. Today, this glacier looks even less healthy to me. Anyhow, I took many many photos that will help us understand how this glacier is changing.

After being buffeted around by clear air turbulence en route to our second of two sites, by a stream of air coming off 'the sheet', we arrived at my 'Cliff Cam' site, that had disappointed me so just two days earlier. The equipment had malfunctioned and delivered one image, one, instead of hundreds, the one being a view of a shallow fog hundreds of meters below. What felt so redeeming was to replace the malfunctioning equipment with a different system, one that had proven itself at two successful sites. The redeployment here was a simple task, and the view from this 300m (980 foot) cliff is just incredible. Thousands of sea birds feed below at the brown plume of water coursing from beneath the glacier. What they so eagerly hunt I know not, but these birds, and their prey, share some symbiotic relationship with the glacier.

My day continued to be exciting, as we landed on the ship, just minutes before the open boat began. A crowd awaited. I had time to change clothes, then out into the crowd... I was engaged, talking in detail with a number of people about how fascinating this unfolding climate story is. I had no expectation that studying Greenland would be this interesting and apparently significant on the global scale. I have reason to believe this ice sheet is contributing significantly to the observed 2.8mm (.11 inch) per year global mean sea level rise. More than 100 million people live within 1 m of sea level and so are threatened by expected rise.

One local said to me, 'we know the climate is changing... we don’t need scientists to tell us this...we just look out the window and see the ice and snow are not where they usually are...and the animals behave differently', apparently referring to how the seal or bird hunting season has changed.

The day ended meeting old friends, friends from 10 years earlier, invited back to their house, some wine to drink, a guitar to play, and a view on the walk to a hopping bar of the sun setting over icebergs.

- Jason

Greetings from Ilulissat, southeast of Disko Island. We arrived here two days ago after a day and a half transit from Nuuk, the capital of Greenland. We were at anchor yesterday but tied up at a dock this morning for open boats later today. A mid-sized fishing boat was already at the dock when we came in, leaving not much room to maneuver the Arctic Sunrise into place. Even so, Arne "parked" the ship as easily as I would my car, except there is a huge difference between my comparatively tiny Subaru and a 900-ton ship.

The main attraction here is the glacier in Ilulissat Fjord. The Danish name for the town and the glacier is Jakobshavn, but it's more appropriate and politically correct to refer to them by their Greenlandic name: Ilulissat. Ilulissat glacier is easily accessible from the town of Ilulissat, making it the most studied glacier in Greenland. It's the world's fastest moving glacier at 14km/year (beating out Kangerdlugssuaq by 0.2km/year!), and it doubled its speed and retreated 10km between 1992 and 2003. I'm mentioning this since all of the scientific research and articles I’ve seen on the glacier refer to it as "Jakobshavn Glacier" or "Jakobshavn Isbrae," so keep that in mind if you Google the name to get more information.

At any rate, I went ashore yesterday with Martina, Nick (photographer), Andreas (videographer) and Gunilla (Swedish journalist). The harbor is filled with fishing boats from small skiffs to small trawlers, and the world’s largest halibut processing plant sits on the dock right behind us. Martin (cook) traded half a carton of cigarettes for a huge garbage bag filled with cod that was so fresh it was still moving.

Martina cold-called a tourist shop because it had the word "nature" in its name, which turned out to be a very lucky call. The shop owner is from Italy but has been in Greenland for 25 years and speaks fluent Greenlandic, Danish and English. He hooked us up with an Inuit hunter, Niels, and within a half hour of walking into the shop Niels was telling us how climate change has affected his ability to hunt and fish. Niels offered to take Nick, Andreas and Gunilla out in his boat so they could see where he fishes.

While they were doing that, Martina and I walked through town putting up posters about today's open boats. It didn’t take long to figure out that Ilulissat is different from other communities we've visited in Greenland. For one, a lot of tourists come here to backpack, dog sledge, and see the glacier and ice sheet. Between tourism and the thriving fishing industry, the economy seems to be doing ok and there appears to be a whole lot less unemployment. Yes, there are obvious downsides to tourism, and if not done sustainably, then fishing has its own set of problems. But if a town has to develop itself economically, then given the choice between tourism and oil and gas development, I'd choose tourism any day.

Lots of people here - Greenlandic and Danes alike - ask us about the sealing issue. It's been really good to be able to listen to peoples’ concerns and then respond with what Greenpeace did and did not do vis-a-vis the seal issue. Explaining that Greenpeace never opposed sealing in Greenland and that we don’t oppose their current hunting and fishing goes a long way to mend relationships. Of course, there will always be people who dislike Greenpeace regardless of what we say and do, but that's the same wherever we go. Millie, the Greenlandic translator who was on board for the first half of the trip, told us that for many Greenlanders, it’s important for them to get issues off their chest, and once they’ve been aired, they can move on. Of course that is a simplistic way of describing a cultural attribute, but it does seem to be the case with folks we speak with. It's a very practical, compassionate and forgiving way to maneuver through the world.

It's easy to bridge from the sealing issue to how climate change is affecting and will continue to affect sea ice, and how that in turn affects hunting. Everyone we've spoken to has a story to tell about how the weather has changed: it's not as cold as it used to be, it's hotter than it ever has been, the ice has changed, they can no longer dog sled for as many months per year, or some other anecdotal evidence about climate change. All the people we've met are unanimously in favor of Greenpeace's climate work in Greenland. Many have said they hope we can amplify their voices so that industrialized countries hear the message that climate change is an urgent problem and requires immediate action. Climate change is a threat to their very existence and we certainly don't have to tell them that. As a related aside, the vice mayor of Ilulissat provided great testimony on video about the impact of climate change on this community and on Greenlandic culture, but he started out his interview by basically asking, "do you mind if I begin by explaining how grateful I am that Greenpeace is here and how thankful I am for your work on climate change?" Clearly, our work and message on climate change is very well received and the potential for future campaigning is enormous.

Today's open boats were very successful. Hundreds of people showed up at the ship between 3 p.m. and 5 p.m. and again from 7 p.m. to 9 p.m. The ship was packed the entire time. The earlier open boat had a good mix of European tourists from a cruise ship that's in town for a day, as well as many Ilulissat residents. Members of the Danish Parliament arrived on a boat that tied up near the Arctic Sunrise, so Thom (radio operator) walked over with a bunch of pamphlets and invited them on board to see the ship. Many of them accepted the offer, and it was great to speak with them, too. I can't imagine having an impromptu, honest and forthright conversation with any member of the U.S. Congress, especially on board a Greenpeace ship.

The evening open boat was punctuated by the return of our helicopter. Before the open boat started the helicopter flew off with Arne to Ilulissat Fjord so he could check out the ice conditions and report back to a Jason (a scientist working with us on board) about whether it would be at all possible to bring a ship into the fjord to undertake scientific measurements. There were about 100+ people on board the ship and once we knew the helicopter would be back within three minutes, we corralled them all to safe viewing places forward of the ship's crane. It was quite dramatic and no doubt a memorable event for all of our visitors.

Tomorrow morning we pick up two Italian TV journalists, then head north for a few hours to a new anchorage where we'll document the melt lakes on the ice sheet. More on that soon.

- Melanie

"Please work", said Jason Box (Ohio State Geography/Byrd Polar Research Center glaciologist) as if in prayer, before we even land. This morning he had retrieved the first of his automatic monitoring cameras - set up last May. It had taken exactly one photo (the day after he set it up), and then stopped working. Definitely a setback, although not entirely surprising given the harsh conditions, precarious nature of electronics and this relatively novel application of automatic monitoring.

Now we are landing at a second site. This one on the ice sheet itself. As soon as Hughie (heli pilot) gives us the OK, we're out of the helicopter and getting the camera down. When Jason installed it, the white battery box was at ground level, but as usual the winter snow has all melted by now - leaving the batteries almost out of reach. Carefully we lower the mounting pole and open the airtight camera enclosure. Jason's too eager to check the camera to explain his setup just now, but we go over it later.

How it works

The camera is a regular consumer brand digital still camera connected to something called an "intervalometer" - a device that operates at intervals. The intervalometer takes a picture every few hours throughout the day. The power comes from two sealed gel cell batteries, like car batteries but smaller, recharged by a 20 watt solar panel, which Jason calculates supplies about twice as much power as the system needs. The enclosure is the same type used for security cameras, and is packed with silicon desiccant to absorb the moisture inside and keep the glass from fogging up.

Jason tested his equipment in an Ohio University cold room with temperature sensors inside the camera. Even at -4 Fahrenheit (-20C) the camera kept itself warm enough to stay just above freezing. Although Jason first used a digital camera to do time lapse monitoring (of snow drifts) in 1996, and Station Zackenberg has had a year-round camera on a mountain since about the same time, the ones we took down today are the first long term monitoring cameras on the ice cap that Jason knows of.

[View snow drift animation here: http://polarmet.mps.ohio-state.edu/jbox/drift]

When Jason set the camera up on location, he and his college surveyed the area and set out marker flags at known GPS coordinates to give him some frame of reference when looking at the photos. The surrounding landscape is changed over time by snow, rain and wind (although no matter what time of year it is, the scenery at the camera site can be described as "basically white").

The all important data

When we get it down, the enclosure is intact, and the camera in good shape. Jason gingerly pulls it out, and turns it on. "There are 516 pictures on this camera," he tells me grinning. Looking at the images back on the ship, we realize that he has succeeded in documenting a melt lake forming - and draining, and forming, and draining, and so on. This is slightly unexpected, and possibly interesting. Other melt lakes have been observed to fill slowly, and then drain suddenly.

At the third site of the day, the camera proves more difficult to get down. We end up using a hacksaw to cut through its mounting pole. This camera has also worked. It monitored a ridge in the ice sheet. If the ridge changed position as summer went on, then it was probably related to climate events, if it stayed in one place it was probably structural to the ice sheet. Just eyeballing the images, it looks like it didn't move.

Later, the two working cameras will both be redeployed to monitor the front of Jakobshavn glacier. Jakobshavn is a well-studied glacier that has more than doubled in speed over the last ten years. Intensive monitoring, using these cameras, will provide insight into how fast it is moving at its bottom end, and how much its speed varies seasonally. This is an outlet glacier - meaning it transports ice from the ice sheet down into the ocean. Outlet glaciers are thought to be vital to the fate of the Greenland ice sheet, and the fact that major ones surveyed on this trip are speeding up is alarming.

Results

The data collected, although not Earth shaking, will add to the body of knowledge about what is happening to the Greenland ice sheet. Also important, is that this method of collecting data can be applied in other research areas as well – such as monitoring the volume of ice coming off glaciers in the form of icebergs.

This is often how science works, not with Jurassic Park like suddenness, but with incremental steps forward. One experiment leading to the next, and a continuing refinement of techniques. In fact, it took over a decade, and hundreds-of-thousands of man-hours, before the authoritative scientific body on the subject concluded that our planet is heating up at least in part (probably mostly) because of our greenhouse gas emissions (2001 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Third Assessment).

It's folly to ignore so much painstakingly accumulated scientific evidence - yet that is what many, including the Bush administration, are trying to do. Despite their resistance, we need to start an energy revolution - to go from a fossil fuel dominated energy strategy to one that takes advantage of renewable energy technologies. If you are in the U.S., your help is especially needed.

- Andrew

Nuuk is home to the Greenland National Museum, which has displays on Greenlandic art and Greenlandic history. Its most famous artifacts are the Qilakitsoq mummies from the 15'th century. According to our guidebook, these were found in 1972 by two brothers out hunting, but left in place until 1977 when the museum heard about them.

What caught my attention were the replicas of qajaqs (kayaks) and umiaqs (rowboats, used mostly by women). It is amazing how people survived, and thrived, in such a harsh environment for thousands of years, using only the resources available locally.

Since farming is not much of an option up here, the culture that developed was largely dependant on hunting for food. While over the centuries this culture has always adapted to changes, now it is in danger of dying out - and according to Daniel Thorleifsen, director of the Greenland National Museum, the rapidly warming climate is partly to blame. If hunters cannot catch what is needed to keep the economies of their remote communities going, people will have to move elsewhere.

"There is no doubt that with a changing climate the hunter societies will have to move to other places," he told us when we visited the museum. "Mostly, they will move to the cities as climate refugees."

The problem for the hunters is two fold: They need good strong sea ice to get out to where the animals are; and some of the animals they hunt rely on the ice as part of their habitat. So the fate of the hunting culture in Greenland has always been tied to the ice, and now that ice is disappearing.

It is normal for Arctic sea ice to melt in the summer, but what both scientists and Greenlandic hunters are telling us is that the sea ice now melts earlier in the summer and freezes later in the winter. 2002 was a record low year for sea ice, with 2003 and 2004 close behind. And it looks like 2005 may set yet another new record low for sea ice. According to NASA, not only is the summer sea ice diminishing, but it has begun to decline in the winter as well.

Ice reflects light and heat better than open water, so there is a feedback effect - the more ice that melts, the higher the chance of more ice melting. Some scientists worry that a threshold will be crossed (and perhaps has already passed) beyond which the Arctic sea ice cannot recover.

This sort of news is alarming for Thorleifsen. He warned that if the climate continues to heat up, "The Greenlandic sophisticated hunting culture will become something that exists only in museums."

Nothing, however, is certain. The industrialized countries most responsible for human caused global warming can still choose a new energy future - based on efficiency and renewable energy. Some have already begun investing in large-scale wind farms, and other projects. Almost all have signed the Kyoto Protocol. But a lot more work is needed to pull off this energy revolution - especially in the US where the Bush administration has opposed they Kyoto Protocol at every turn, and clings to an outdated fossil fuel and nuclear based energy strategy. If you're from the US, be sure to sign up for the Thin Ice Contest to help.

- Andrew

We held our open boat near the capital of Greenland today. I say "near" since we were at anchor. There was a cruise ship in town, which needed the dock space, so we ferried people out on one of our boats instead. I was boat crew for a few hours, while Phil (outboard mechanic) drove. At times there was a bit of swell, making it a small adventure for people getting on and off the ship. Most of the kids seemed to enjoy the experience, and many Greenlanders are used to being out in boats so took it in stride. Overall, it was a great open boat day, with a constant stream of people waiting at the dock for pick up.

Nuuk is a proper modern city. It's got a Thai restaurant (and an Mexican one), a civic center, a museum, government and office buildings, public transportation and even housing projects. In fact, one percent of the entire Greenland population lives on one block here ("blok P"). Nuuk is also home to Santa's mailbox - a big red thing full of hopeful letters, visible from the ship.

Saturday, the crew got ashore for some bowling and walking around the town. Tomorrow we'll finish provisioning and meet with government officials, then head out to continue the science work.

- Andrew

Just after leaving Narsaq, Jason (scientist) went by helicopter about 25 miles west of the town to Sermilik Isbrae glacier, and brought back this photo. You can see the vegetation line 800 feet (245m) above sea level where the glacier was a century and a half ago. (Look for the dark green stuff in the upper right corner of the image.) Lichen and other vegetation are moving into the newly exposed territory, but much more slowly than the ice is receding.

Measurements of the glacier's height show that it thinned 395 feet (120m) between 1985 and 2000¹ - the largest documented thinning of any Greenland glacier. It used to also have a floating tongue extending down the fjord, but has now retreated back into shallow water where its front rests on the fjord bottom, right at the edge of the ice cap.

With our help, Jason set up an automatic camera that will take a picture of the glacier's front every four hours (during daylight). He will use these images to track how fast the ice is flowing down the glacier from the ice cap, into the sea.

The changes to this glacier were already documented before our visit, but are yet another sign that the Greenland ice sheet is in danger. If you want to help put the breaks on global warming, and you live in the U.S. (the world's worst global warming polluter), sign up to the Thin Ice Contest for ways you can take action.

- Andrew

During our visit to Narsaq, we heard some unexpected (to us) good news here on the front lines of global warming impacts. A small-scale hydro project is under construction just east of here that should free both Narsaq and nearby Qaqortoq from dirty, and expensive, diesel electricity generation.

For many communities in the northern and remote areas, most if not all, of their electricity is produced by burning a variety of diesel known as bunker fuel. This type of electricity generation is one of the most polluting ways to generate electricity (although less polluting than the coal used in a number of different countries like the U.S. that relies on coal for 60 percent of it's electricity production), both from local air pollution as well as from a global warming perspective.

From that perspective, Narsaq is no different than say a small community in the Canadian or U.S. Arctic. The diesel engines used here are 40-year-old ship engines. There are three of them - two are required to produce enough energy for the town, the third one for back-up and maintenance purposes. One would think that in a place like Greenland, people wouldn't suffer from air pollution related disease such as asthma, yet they do.

Generally speaking, diesel fuel has a high content of particulates and other pollutants, which are prone to cause respiratory diseases. In the case of bunker fuel it is even worse. These black diesel particulate emissions also coat snow and ice, making it less reflective and more prone to melting. Furthermore, like all use of fossil fuels, burning diesel creates the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide. So for many reasons the news of the Qorlortorsuaq small dam project, which should help these communities diminish their dependence on diesel power, is quite welcome.

The project consists of a small dam under construction just east of here that will produce 7.2 MW of power, enough for 5,000 people. Transmission lines will also have to be set up to then bring the power to Narsaq and Qaqortoq - hopefully allowing them to shut down their dirty diesel generators for good. This project has the other advantage of being able to produce energy at a much lower cost than diesel generation.

Greenpeace's position regarding hydropower is one of a case by case analysis. As a general rule, we don't like large dams because of the massive flooding they create, local populations they tend to displace as well as the fact they do emit, although less then fossil fuels electricity generation, greenhouse gases (through the decay of flooded vegetation for example).

In the case of small dams, the question that often arises is what is "small" - i.e. the amount of power generation (in MW), the area flooded or some other factor. In the case of the Qorlortorsuaq dam, 7.2 MW would be considered small by all definitions I have seen! Of course, the community needs here are also quite small.

Across the Arctic, there other similar interesting projects being developed such as the "Renewable energy for northern communities" program by the Canadian Government which aims to install hybrid wind and solar systems with conventional diesel generators to reduce communities dependence on fossil fuel. It's encouraging to see that the renewable energy message is reaching even the more remote parts of our world.

If only countries like the U.S., Canada and others could do the same.

- Steven

[Photo credit: Edvard Bach]

It's an oddity of living on board a ship that wherever you go, you bring your home with you. And if it's a Greenpeace ship, pretty much whenever you visit a town, the townspeople also get a chance to visit you. So it feels more like exchanging visits than just going visiting.

Today we exchanged visits with Narsaq. Our guidebook says the town's name means "the plain", although its landscape is a little bumpier than I associate with the word "plain". I would say "mountainous", "fjordish" or at least "hilly " would be more like it - but then maybe this is as flat as costal Greenland gets. At any rate, the town has a good harbor, about 1,800 people, houses in the usual colors (red, blue, green and yellow - very pretty), and icebergs just off shore.

The main industry here is the fish plant, and fishing is also a big form of recreation. They do get a few tourists, and you might be surprised to learn that some of them come for the fishing, which I'm told is excellent. They also have a mighty big hill (it would be called a mountain in some places). I'm told that part way up the hill you can find rare stones called Tuttupit, which range in color from pink to purple and are only found one other place in the world. Walking the surrounding hills is another favorite past time for both locals and tourists. Considering the spectacular landscape, I'd guess the views are worth the more than any precious stones you might find.

The local kids are keen on roller blading. During today's open boat, one of them was even cruising around the deck. Others were playing Attortaanneq - known in English as "tag" - chasing and hiding from each other. Here's a tip: favorite hiding place is behind the bridge chart table.

The adults here echoed the same disturbing news about a changing climate that we had heard in Ittoqqortoomiit - less sea ice, warmer water, a local glacier has visibly thinned, and Otto (our local guide and interpreter) told us that the weather has become more unpredictable, which is a very big deal if you are a hunter or fisherman.

Another local told us about a glacier fed, hydro power plant being built nearby to replace diesel generators. This is probably being done as much for cost reasons as environmental reasons. Either way, hydropower, when done right, is a highly reliable and environmentally benign source of renewable energy.

In a town this size it is easy to know where your energy comes from. In a big city, it can be less obvious. Where does your electricity come from? How much of it is generated from renewable sources? Try asking your power company these questions. No mater where you live, just letting your power company know a customer cares is important. In some areas, you can even choose to buy your electricity exclusively from renewable sources. In the US, also be sure to take part in the Thin Ice Contest.

- Andrew

Greetings from Narsaq on the west coast of Greenland. Yesterday at 3:30 a.m. the ship entered Prince Christian Sound, the eastern entrance to a maze of fjords that zig zag through the southern tip of Greenland and join the east and west coasts.

The other option for getting to the west coast was via open water around the tip of Cape Farewell. Much like Cape Horn and Tierra del Fuego, Cape Farewell is the confluence of three or four currents and some other nautical nastiness that I know nothing about, the bottom line being the conditions are really bad on a good day and utterly horrendous on a bad day.

Needless to say I'm glad Arne (captain) opted for the inside passage route which proved to be quite an excellent adventure, especially given it was Sunday and most of us had the luxury to gawk at the surroundings.

At any rate, we entered the sound when it was still dark. Now that we are below the Arctic Circle and are getting on into August it gets dark for a few hours every night (you would think this is a welcome occurrence but to me it just signals that the short Arctic summer is coming to a close).

The wind topped 30 knots as Peter and Texas maneuvered the ship into the entrance of the Sound. The ship heeled a few degrees to port because of the wind and that's no small feat since the ship weighs SOMETHING LIKE 900 tons. It was a full-on squall with sideways rain which can be lovely if you're tucked inside a strong, capable ship, warming your hands over a heater as you look out the window at the snotty weather.

I couldn't help thinking about the explorers who first entered the fjord 1100 years ago. They had no charts, no idea of where the route would take them, no radar or depth finder to show where the icebergs or rocks were located. Crazy stuff, especially in the harsh weather we were encountering. It's certainly inhospitable here and I tend to forget that when I look out at the world from the comfort and safety of this ship.

As the sun rose it became easier to see the dramatic cliffs on either side of the fjord. Huge waterfalls spilled from the cliffs, often the wind was so strong that it blew the raging streams back up, turning them from "waterfalls" into "waterups." Likewise, from a distance we saw a big tabular iceberg in the channel with what looked like four water spouts jetting out of its top. We couldn't figure out what was going on, but as we came alongside the berg we figured it out: channels of rain and melt water running down the sides of the berg were being blown back up by the wind, which at this point was gusting to 50 knots. Nick snapped plenty of pictures so hopefully you'll get a peak at what I'm trying to describe.

The entire fjord system was spectacular, lined by jagged peaks draped with glaciers and waterfalls. The water in the fjord was a gorgeous turquoise blue-green, and later in the morning the rain stopped, making it a lot easier to spend longer chunks of time outside. At one point we circumnavigated an island in the fjord system, which added another beautiful hour or so to the transit.

Later in the morning I huddled with some other folks on a small deck below the bridge where the life rafts and survival suits are stored. It's a great place to hang out because you're outside yet shielded from the wind (unless it's coming from the bow) and have a perfect vantage point for taking in the scenery. I feel like such a halfwit because it's taken me years to figure out that this "sweet spot" exists on the ship. Duh.

After six hours we got to the end of the fjord system and were on the west coast of Greenland. Lots of big bergs in striking shapes were floating around, the sky turned dark and the wind starting whipping up again, painting a very surreal picture. The sun poked through the dark sky here and there, casting a shiny veneer on the icebergs, some blue and some white, making them look even more stark against the black sky.

We reached Narsaq last night at 9:30 and I was already in bed when the anchor dropped. The early bedtime had nothing to do with waking up at 3:30 a.m. and everything to do with a major food coma brought on after dinner. Hughie had the bright idea of melting Mars bars (like a Milky Way bar in the U.S.) and pouring the resulting warm goo over ice cream. I'm not usually a big ice cream person, in fact, in the world of nutritionally devoid foods, I prefer salty bad things to sweet bad things any day of the week. But something happened last night and I gobbled down three bowls, which was lovely, but the after effects were anything but. Hughie also had three bowls full, but I guess that's more routine for him coming from Scotland where they deep-fry their Mars bars before eating them. Even so, as he waddled off to his cabin to sleep it off, he muttered, "I feel like a python that's swallowed a donkey."

- Melanie

Today I had an interesting experience. I accompanied a scientist up onto the ice sheet to drill for ice core samples. I'll make the distinction between glaciers and ice sheets by saying 82% (at least) of Greenland is covered by a massively thick layer of ice. At its centre it's 3 kilometres (1.9 miles) thick. That's the ice sheet.

When the ice sheet gets close to the coast, it squeases out between the coastal mountains. What is squishing out between the mountains are glaciers. So a glacier, big as it is, pales in comparison to the immensity of the ice sheet.

We were on the ice sheet on the east coast of Greenland. Just a big sea of featureless ice white landscape, stretching away all the way to the west coast hundreds of miles away. It was blindingly white. The helicopter pilot complained that the landscape was so featureless that he had a hard time landing, as it was hard to tell how far above the ice he was. There was no reference point. Just a smooth white surface as far as the eye could see.

The ice coring machine was driven by a small two stroke engine and consisted of a hollow tube which was called the auger and pipes which were added above it as it's depth increased. The auger was 1.5 metres (5 feet) long and cut a cylinder of ice about 10 cm wide x 1.5 metres (4 inches x 5 feet) long. Sections of pipe were added above the auger as it went deeper.

As it went deeper it became heavier and more difficult to retrieve. Once we drilled down a further 1.5 metres we stoped and pulled everything out of the hole to retrieve the bottom auger section.

The auger section contained the core sample. We carefully pushed the sample out of the auger. Then we measured it, weighed it, photographed it, sectioned it into 20 cm lengths, quarterede the sections, then recorded and bagged the quartered section. There were usually 5 to 6 sections per core sample. Then we would reassembled the auger and drilling pipe, adding another metre of drill pipe and started the process again.

We woke up at 05:00 a.m., got to the ice sheet at 05:30, and got back to the ship at 13:00 p.m. We worked steadily during our time on the ice and managed to drill to a depth of 11 metres. According to Jason Box (Ohio State Geography/Byrd Polar Research Center), the scientist for the ice sampling, we ended by drilling ice from the summer of 2003. Eleven metres of compressed snow and ice in two years! I'm impressed. But then again everything thing about Greenland leaves an impression on me.

peace and love,

phil

For the Bush administration, the answer to that question has been clear since 2001: "No." However, simply saying "No" to Kyoto seems to be a more and more difficult position to maintain for the White House. It does seem like the Bush Administration is being pressured on all sides: U.S. states and cities, leaders of the G8 and even members of the Republican Party are calling for action on climate change.

So far, Bush's response to this criticism has been a lot of hot air, and unfortunately the announcement made yesterday morning in Thailand is no exception. This so-called "Vision statement" has no specific objectives in terms of reducing the greenhouse gas emissions that are causing global warming. There are no indications of how this mechanism would work, or how much money is going to be invested in it, and the technological options proposed would please even the most anti-Kyoto forces in the world - like Mr. Bush's buddies at Exxon.

On the other hand, the answer to the question above should be equally clear to the 152 countries that have ratified the Kyoto Protocol: Kyoto has to be the only game in town. Why? Because it is the only global agreement with targets and timetables to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, because it took about a decade to negotiate and clarify all the rules, and finally because thanks to the Kyoto agreement countries around the world are starting to reduce their emissions. Countries should know that the minute we start signing side deals with only a handful of countries and where anybody can choose to do what they want to do, the global effort to tackle climate change becomes seriously compromised. And if I were paranoid, I'd say that's exactly what the White House is trying to do.

I can just imagine Canadian Environment Minister, Stéphane Dion, and our Prime Minister, Paul Martin, waking-up to news of this new agreement this morning, and being rather unhappy with their U.S. counterparts. After all, the vast majority of Canadians take great pride in the fact that we ratified Kyoto despite the Bush administration's refusal to do so.

Not only that, but Canadian officials are hard at work preparing the next United Nations meeting on climate change, which is set to take place in Montreal at the end of November. This meeting will be one of the most important one since Kyoto in 1997. It's the first meeting of Conference of Parties (countries that have signed and ratified the 1992 Rio Convention on climate change – which includes the U.S.) to ever take place in North America, and it's objective is to prepare for the next steps after Kyoto.

For the Canadian government, and most of the countries that have ratified Kyoto, the new U.S. lead initiative is nothing less than a slap in the face. Then again, it wouldn't be the first time. In 2001 when the U.S. announced it was pulling out of Kyoto, Christine Todd Whitman was attending a conference on the Kyoto Protocol with some 34 other ministers of the environment from all over the Americas (that conference was held in Montreal and hosted by Canadian Environment Minister of the time, David Anderson). It seemed Whitman failed, or maybe just forgot, to mention to anybody at the meeting, including Minister Anderson, the fact that the White House was pulling out of Kyoto. Clearly, he was not impressed.

But in July of the same year the rest of the world united and refused to let the Bush Administration 'kill' this important international agreement. We hope that this effort can be repeated, and that the U.S. administration can be convinced to take meaningful action and come back on board.

All of that being said, Mr. Bush and I do agree on one point, Kyoto won't cut it. Unfortunately, the convergence stop's there. For those of us concerned about climate change, Kyoto is only the beginning, since industrial countries must reduce emissions up to 80 percent by mid-century (compared to 1990) in order to avoid dangerous climate change.

- Steven

Steven is a Greenpeace Canada climate campaigner who joined us on July 25th. He has been fielding calls from Canadian press over the satellite phone about the global warming "Vision Statement" released by the White House. After Greenland, the ship will go to Canada.