The Arctic Sunrise left Kangerdlugssuaq Fjord on August 30 and has been motoring north up the east coast of Greenland since then. It's been a palette of greys outside — grey water, grey sky, grey fog. It's nothing like the unbroken weeks of sunshine we experienced in northwest and southeast Greenland. Here on the northeast coast all we've seen since leaving Kangerdlugssuaq Fjord is shades of grey. We haven't seen any clear skies, sea ice or icebergs to break the monotony of greys.


Click the image to view more "Climate Impacts" pics from the Arctic Expedition 2009 on Flickr.

Until this afternoon, when Arne, our ice pilot, alerted us to the presence of an “ice blink” on the port side of the ship. An ice blink is a bright stripe of white on the horizon between sea and sky that indicates sea ice, it’s actually the reflection or glare from sea ice onto low clouds. I have no idea why it’s called an “ice blink,” and neither does Arne, who is a walking dictionary on sea ice. Perhaps it has something to do with shutting your eyes most of the way — as if you’re blinking — and only having a thin strip of vision? Or maybe the word is derived from a Norwegian or Danish term that has to do with ice or glare? I have no idea. All I know is that the ice blink means sea ice, and sea ice means happiness.

Why does sea ice mean happiness? Because it tamps down ocean swells and waves and guarantees the Arctic Sunrise can motor along without the trademark rolling, pitching and corkscrewing of this keel-free icebreaker. This ship is built like an egg, and it's famous for making even the heartiest sailor seasick. For some reason I avoided getting seasick since leaving Amsterdam on June 12, but all that ended on August 31 when the ship hit some swells and winds that caused her to corkscrew – a motion that caused just about everyone on board to succumb to seasickness.

And seasick I got. In spades. At one point I could not even make it to the toilet down the alleyway, I just hunkered down on the floor of my cabin with a bowl. It was miserable, I tell you, and I swore to myself that I would never, ever step foot on a Greenpeace ship again. If there was a way to jump ship and get to land I would have taken it, I felt that wretched. It kept up through lunchtime yesterday, September 2 when the seas flattened out and, in the words of our Russian doctor on board, Valeriy, “I finally found the meaning of true happiness.”

The appearance of the ice blink this afternoon signals calm seas and means the worst of the transit from Kangerdlugssuaq Fjord to 79 Glacier is behind us. It also means we’ll soon arrive at 79 Glacier and the independent scientists on board will be able to continue their research on the complex interactions between climate change, oceans and glaciers in east Greenland. It also means we’ll soon be able to send more pictures, videos and eyewitness accounts of the impacts of climate change on Greenland’s glaciers to the public, media and policy makers, which in the end, is what keeps us all going. We can’t expect world leaders to come up with a fair, ambitious and binding climate policy in Copenhagen this December without us, the public, putting pressure on them to deliver the goods. And bearing witness to the Arctic meltdown provides the impetus for the pressure.

With so much at stake and so many people all over the planet doing so much to pressure their heads of state to make the right decisions in Copenhagen, the least I can do is to put up with a bit of seasickness. Looking back, it was over in a blink, anyway.

Today is August 22. We are mid-way through leg 2 of this Arctic Climate Impacts Expedition in Sermilik Fjord. We have been wildly busy since arriving in Tasiilaq on August 17, but things are going really, really well. We’ve been incredibly lucky: none of the problems that could have thrown a wrench in to our well laid plans - fog grounding the helicopter, heavy ice impeding the ship’s transit, scientific equipment breaking down – have happened. I chalk this up to “the luck of the Irish” since four of our crew are Irish - the chief engineer, media officer, helicopter pilot and videographer.

Since things are going so smoothly, I’m taking a few moments out of my busy day and have taken my laptop up to the bridge to churn out a blog. Here’s a bit of a running description of what’s going on from my vantage point.

The helicopter is about to take off to take a TV crew back to Tasillaq after they spent the night on the ship. The helicopter will pick up another TV crew in Tasiilaq, and bring them to the ship for their night on board. It’s 9am now and this is the helicopter’s third flight. The helicopter first started flying at 5:30am to take a team of glaciologists to Helheim Glacier to retrieve GPS units that are recording the glacier’s flow speed (an indicator of its melt rate, and in turn, the pace and intensity of global warming here in Greenland).

Off on the starboard side of the ship a team of oceanographers from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, led by Dr. Fiamma Straneo, are conducting “CTD casts.” “CTD” stands for “conductivity, temperature, depth,” three indicators in the deep waters of Sermilik Fjord that will help them to understand the complex dynamics of currents and how they deliver warm water to Helheim Glacier at the head of the fjord. The CTD cast is done with a device that is lowered through the water column on a metal line, using a winch that’s been welded to the deck just for this purpose. The fjords here in Greenland are very deep, and the CTD casts often go to depths of 2,300 feet. As one of the oceanographers described it, Sermilik Fjord is like a submerged Grand Canyon.


Here on the bridge, Captain Pete is trying to maneuver the ship through waters that are completely covered by ice at the surface. Huge icebergs float amongst the smaller pieces of ice, and as the ship moves through the ice, it sounds like a huge gin and tonic (Ok, Pete says it is more like a frozen daiquiri, but I maintain the gin and tonic comparison). He can take the ship through the smaller pieces of ice, the ship shoves them aside, but it’s impossible to shove or move the larger icebergs. When I went to grab my laptop out of my cabin I looked outside the porthole and just a few feet away was a solid wall of ice, the port side of the ship was sitting next to an iceberg that measured about 50 high. And that’s a small iceberg. We’ve seen icebergs that are so huge that they look like tremendous walls of ice, or small glaciers themselves. It’s unreal.

Because there is so much ice in the fjord, moving the ship is very slow going. The CTD casts are conducted in lines across the fjord in order to get a picture of water currents and movement. The ship is trying to follow straight lines across the fjord that are drawn on the chart, but in reality, it’s impossible to follow them due to all of the giant icebergs in the water. The ship’s actual course is a zigzag on the chart, not a straight line.

It is crazy beautiful here. After close to two months without sunrises and sunsets, it’s nice to be at a latitude where we can enjoy them again. We have been very lucky with the weather and the skies have been clear, so when the sun sets at night it casts a pink and orange glow on the ice in the fjord. Two nights ago we saw some faint northern lights that was also a treat.

After today we have three more days in Sermilik Fjord before departing Tasiilaq at the end of the day on August 25 and heading north toward Kangerdlugssuaq Glacier, and then on to 79 Glacier even further north up the east coast of Greenland. This period in Sermilik Glacier is our busiest, most hectic time on the entire three-month expedition, and so far it is going swimmingly well, better than I ever expected. The factors that guarantee a successful expedition in the Arctic are a good crew, and lots of luck. We’ve got an amazing team on board, even after almost three months on board together everyone is working hard and doing great work. All we need is for our “luck of the Irish” to continue to hold.

The Arctic Sunrise is currently in transit from the west to the east coast of Greenland. We said goodbye to the on-board science team in Nugatsiaq on August 9, and to two Chinese journalists and a campaigner from Greenpeace China in Sisimiut on August 11. Our next port-of-call is Tasiilaq on the southeast coast of Greenland.

You can follow our Arctic Expedition tour on this handy Google map:


View Arctic Tour in a larger map

An independent science team from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachussetts will join the ship in Tasiilaq. The team, led by Dr. Fiamma Stranneo, will undertake a variety of oceanographic measurements in Sermilik Fjord, just east of Tasiilaq, from August 19-25. Their goal is to determine if warm, sub-tropical waters are coming into contact with glaciers in the fjord, and to determine the processes that control the variability of ocean conditions where the glaciers meet the sea.

Why is this important? The IPCC’s estimates for sea level rise by the end of this century contain very little contribution from the melting of ice sheets in Greenland and Antarctica because the dynamics of the melt are so poorly understood. As scientists conduct research and begin to unravel the complicated dynamics that govern and influence the melt of the enormous ice sheets at opposite ends of the planet, their predictions for the rate of sea level rise increase. The IPCC’s 2007 estimate for sea level rise by 2100 is 20-60cm (8-24 inches). Since then, scientists have predicted sea levels will actually rise one to two meters (3.3 to 6.6 feet). That’s a significant jump in just two years’ time, particularly since so many of the dynamic forces that affect ice sheet melt and flow rate are not yet understood.


The Arctic sunrise is pictured here amidst cracked and drifting ice in front of the Petermann glacier (out of shot to the left). This is the zone where the glacier's front meets the sea and starts to break up. This is the furthest point that the ship can get to the front of the glacier to begin research via helicopter, inflatable and perhaps by foot/skis. © Nick Cobbing/Greenpeace

Dr. Stranneo’s science program in Sermilik Fjord is well-organized and very ambitious, so we are prepared to support her team’s research around the clock, 24/7 if need be. However, scientific research is not the only activity that will be underway in Sermilik Fjord. Although it’s pretty remote, Tasiilaq is relatively easy to reach by air from Iceland and Denmark, so we are able to host a number of VIPs and journalists from around the world while the research is taking place in Sermilik Fjord. This is the one leg of our expedition where a VIP or journalist can join the ship for just a night or two. As a result, we will be hosting a crew from CNN, three German TV crews, one French TV crew, and one Indian TV crew. The ship can only accommodate so many people per night, so additional news crews (AP print and TV, a French newspaper, The Economist) and a Spanish politician will stay in Tasiilaq and be ferried out to the ship for the day.

All told, we’ll have about 20 people cycling on and off the ship as overnight guests, and another ten or so as guests during the day. This may not sound like a lot, but trust me, it is. Each person and their gear must be transported to the ship via a small boat or the helicopter. Ice in the fjord may scuttle our plans to use small boats, and fog (very common in these parts) will keep the helicopter grounded. Every person who joins the ship, even if it’s just for one night, will need to be briefed on safety protocols as well as ship do’s and don’ts. But most importantly, our goal is to provide each guest with a firsthand account and explanation of the work that Dr. Stranneo and her team are conducting, as well as background information on how it relates to the upcoming climate negotiations in December. We want them to leave the ship understanding the urgent need for deep, mandatory reductions in greenhouse gas emissions to increase the chance that the message gets to heads of state who are going to be negotiating a climate treaty in Copenhagen this December.

The media are an important avenue for getting our message out into the general public. Greenpeace puts its money into its campaigns; we simply can’t afford to spend billions of dollars on advertising to get our message out (unlike Big Oil and its allies, who have spent $82 million already this year lobbying against climate legislation). We rely on a variety of other tactics – from our website to public speaking to newsletters and talking to people on the street. Our tactics may be numerous, but media coverage is a great way to get our message out to many people – including politicians – in one fell swoop. So we are very excited to be hosting so many top-notch journalists during our time in Tasiilaq.

We have a couple of days of “calm” left before the managed chaos that will ensue in Tasiilaq. I for one am looking forward to it. It will be challenging, hard work, but in the end, the rewards will be measurable.

And it’s always a treat to see someone’s face when they come aboard a Greenpeace ship for the first time. I'll have more updates for you soon, so check back!

After spending more than five weeks at the Petermann Glacier, the Arctic Sunrise began its transit down the west coast of Greenland at around midnight Wednesday night. Our primary goal at Petermann Glacier was to document the calving of the glacier — an ice island about 100km2 is expected to fall into the sea any day now — with remote time-lapse cameras perched on 1000 m cliffs overlooking the glacier. Even though the ice island has not yet calved, our time-lapse cameras remain in place, ready to document the glacier's disintegration should it happen this summer.


The Arctic Sunrise reaches 'the ice bridge' in the Robeson channel, at 82.4 North, near the border between Greenland and Canada. This is the Southernmost extent of the summer sea ice which usually extends much further south into the Nares Strait, but has receded dramatically in recent years. © Greenpeace/Nick Cobbing

People have been asking if I’m disappointed that Petermann Glacier did not calve a large ice island while we were there. My honest answer is no.

From the early stages when we first started planning this expedition, I was keenly aware that ice conditions in Nares Strait meant that the ship had only a 50/50 chance of reaching Petermann Glacier in the first place. In reality, our passage north was virtually clear of sea ice – we sailed right to the top of the strait, reaching the ice bridge that is holding back the Arctic Ocean’s thick, multi-year sea ice on June 29th, just 445 nautical miles from the North Pole. The fact that we actually reached Petermann Glacier at all, and then had more than five weeks to conduct research into the dynamics that influence its (and nearby Humboldt Glacier’s) sensitivity to global warming, was truly an unexpected bonus. Together, Petermann and Humboldt glaciers drain a full ten percent of the ice that flows from the immense Greenland Ice Sheet into the sea, with serious implications for sea level rise the world over.

The independent science team on board the ship gathered a lot of important data in a part of the world that is remote and challenging to reach. With the support of the Arctic Sunrise and her crew, the scientists were able to conduct glacier and oceanographic studies that will help fill the gaps in their own and the greater scientific community’s understanding of how Greenland’s glaciers and the ice sheet react to global warming. In the last seven years, the Greenland Ice Sheet's contribution to sea level rise more than doubled, due to a surprisingly rapid and unpredicted loss of ice. There is still so much that scientists do not understand about how Greenland’s glaciers and ice sheet are reacting to global warming. It’s a stunning example of how the impacts of global warming on the ground are outpacing scientific models, which is the case throughout the Arctic and in much of the world.


The 'whirlpool' and crack on the Petermann glacier. Geophysicist Dr Richard Bates, of the Scottish Oceans Institute at the University of St. Andrews, takes 'casts' of temperature pressure current and salinity. © Greenpeace/Nick Cobbing

Ironically, while the Arctic Sunrise was conducting research on glaciers in northwest Greenland, the Waxman-Markey bill was being further weakened by Congress and fossil fuel industry lobbyists whose goal is to protect business as usual at the expense of protecting the climate. The bill reflects a huge gap between what US lawmakers are willing to do and what climate science is saying the planet needs. It’s clear that no one in the US government, including President Obama himself, is prepared to do what’s necessary to prevent climate catastrophe.

Any bill that does not include science-based targets of at least 40 percent reductions in greenhouse gas emissions by 2020 falls far short of what is needed. Even emissions reductions of 20 or 30 percent by 2020 won’t cut it; it’s just not possible to save the climate a little bit at a time. Obama and Congress can’t shut their eyes and hope this issue will somehow go away. It won’t. In coming years and decades we will all wonder what the heck they were thinking when they failed to address the problem with meaningful action.

I know it’s naïve, but I wish President Obama could spend just one day with us on board this ship, talking with the independent scientists on board about how climate change is affecting Greenland’s glaciers and ice sheet, and in turn, what it means for the US and the rest of the planet. He would leave the ship understanding that anything less than science-based targets in US and global climate policy condemns the world to the worst impacts of climate change, which, by the way, will ravage the economy and health care system in incalculable ways. The economic problems caused by sub-prime mortgages, irresponsible lending and bank failures will seem like child’s play compared with what continued and unabated global warming will cause.

The Arctic Sunrise is now heading south toward the next stages of this expedition. Independent science teams will be joining us to conduct research on Greenland’s east coast glaciers as well as sea ice. We will continue our work here in Greenland, using every tactic we can to amplify the voices of scientists who are on the cutting edge of global warming research. Our hope is that both their work and voices will form part of the impetus for Congress and President Obama to take real action on global warming in the four months that remain before the Copenhagen climate talks in December.

John McCain consistently and falsely says that offshore oil drilling is safe, and that drill rigs have withstood Hurricanes Katrina, Rita and Ike without any significant damage or oil spills.  The facts tell a very different story.

Most recently, Hurricane Ike barreled through the Gulf of Mexico. According to the Minerals Management Service, as of September 15, 2008, 28 of the 3,800 offshore oil and gas production platforms in the Gulf of Mexico had been destroyed, and several other platforms were significantly damaged. On September 16, the oil drilling company Rowan announced one of its drill rigs was missing, and that it had likely capsized and sunk due to Hurricane Ike.  

Yet on September 17 McCain stated he’d visited an oil rig in the Gulf, it survived the hurricane, it was safe and sound, and fish were swimming all around it. Clearly McCain visited a rig that escaped damage, but it’s a tremendous disservice to spin this visit in a way that leads people to believe there was no damage.

It’s not the first time McCain lied about the impact of hurricanes on oil drilling in the Gulf of Mexico. In June, McCain said, “As for offshore drilling, it’s safe enough these days that not even Hurricanes Katrina and Rita could cause significant spillage from the battered rigs off the coasts of New Orleans and Houston.” Yet the US Coast Guard reported that there were over 9 million gallons of oil released from six major and five medium spills (for comparison’s sake, the Exxon Valdez spilled 11 million gallons of oil), and the Minerals Management service reported that Hurricane Rita destroyed 46 platforms and damaged 20 others, while Hurricane Rita destroyed 69 platforms and damaged 32 others.

Not so insignificant, is it?

Now, to be fair, the 9 million gallons spilled as a result of Katrina and Rita were not spilled from offshore rigs. The oil was spilled from onshore tanks and pipelines that failed or ruptured. However, it’s not possible to drill offshore in the Gulf without an extensive network of tanks, pipelines, refineries and other infrastructure. Just as it’s not possible to talk about hurricane damage to oil industry infrastructure without including onshore damage.

More offshore oil drilling will only lead to more oil spills, pollution and global warming. And global warming is the very thing that supercharges storms like Katrina, Rita and Ike, which in turn causes major oil spills and extensive damage to oil industry infrastructure. It’s a vicious cycle that any Senator should approach with true solutions to global warming and this country’s energy crisis: energy efficiency so that we get more out of every drop of oil, and a new vision for US energy that relies on renewable forms of energy such as solar and wind and phases out addiction to oil.