By SETH BORENSTEIN
Distant, icy and largely pristine, Greenland performs an outsized position within the day by day climate skilled by billions of individuals and within the local weather modifications taking form everywhere in the planet.
Greenland is the place local weather change, scarce assets, tense geopolitics and new commerce patterns all intersect, mentioned Ohio College safety and atmosphere professor Geoff Dabelko.
Since his first time period in workplace, President-elect Donald Trump has expressed curiosity in buying Greenland, which is a semiautonomous territory of Denmark, a longtime U.S. ally and a founding member of NATO. It’s also dwelling to a big U.S. army base.
Why is Greenland coveted?
Consider Greenland as an open fridge door or thermostat for a warming world, and it’s in a area that’s warming 4 occasions quicker than the remainder of the globe, mentioned New York College local weather scientist David Holland.
Locked inside are worthwhile uncommon earth minerals wanted for telecommunications, in addition to uranium, billions of untapped barrels of oil and an enormous provide of pure gasoline that was inaccessible however is changing into much less so.
Lots of the similar minerals are presently being equipped largely by China, so different nations corresponding to the US have an interest, Dabelko mentioned. Three years in the past, the Denmark authorities suspended oil growth offshore from the territory of 57,000 folks.
However greater than the oil, gasoline or minerals, there’s ice — a “ridiculous” quantity, mentioned local weather scientist Eric Rignot of the College of California, Irvine.
If that ice melts, it could reshape coastlines throughout the globe and doubtlessly shift climate patterns in such a dramatic method that the risk was the premise of a Hollywood catastrophe film. Greenland holds sufficient ice that if all of it melts, the world’s seas would rise by 24 ft (7.4 meters). Almost a foot of that’s so-called zombie ice, already doomed to soften it doesn’t matter what occurs, a 2022 examine discovered.
Since 1992, Greenland has misplaced about 182 billion tons (169 billion metric tons) of ice annually, with losses hitting 489 billion tons a 12 months (444 billion metric tons) in 2019.
Greenland will likely be “a key focus point” by means of the twenty first century due to the impact its melting ice sheet could have on sea ranges, mentioned Mark Serreze, director of the Nationwide Snow and Ice Knowledge Heart in Boulder, Colorado. “It will likely become a bigger contributor in the future.”
That affect is “perhaps unstoppable,” NYU’s Holland mentioned.
Are different local weather elements at play?
Greenland additionally serves because the engine and on/off swap for a key ocean present that influences Earth’s local weather in some ways, together with hurricane and winter storm exercise. It’s known as the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation, or AMOC, and it’s slowing down as a result of extra recent water is being dumped into the ocean by melting ice in Greenland, Serreze mentioned.
A shutdown of the AMOC conveyor belt is a much-feared local weather tipping level that might plunge Europe and components of North America into extended freezes, a state of affairs depicted within the 2004 film “The Day After Tomorrow.”
“If this global current system were to slow substantially or even collapse altogether — as we know it has done in the past — normal temperature and precipitation patterns around the globe would change drastically,” mentioned local weather scientist Jennifer Francis of the Woodwell Local weather Analysis Heart. “Agriculture would be derailed, ecosystems would crash, and ‘normal’ weather would be a thing of the past.”
Greenland can be altering shade because it melts from the white of ice, which displays daylight, warmth and power away from the planet, to the blue and inexperienced of the ocean and land, which soak up rather more power, Holland mentioned.
Greenland performs a job within the dramatic freeze that two-thirds of the US is presently experiencing. And again in 2012, climate patterns over Greenland helped steer Superstorm Sandy into New York and New Jersey, in line with winter climate skilled Judah Cohen of the non-public agency Atmospheric and Environmental Analysis.
Due to Greenland’s mountains of ice, it additionally modifications patterns within the jet stream, which brings storms throughout the globe and dictates day by day climate. Usually, particularly in winter, a blocking system of excessive strain off Greenland causes Arctic air to plunge to the west and east, smacking North America and Europe, Cohen mentioned.
Why is Greenland’s location so essential?
As a result of it straddles the Arctic circle between the US, Russia and Europe, Greenland is a geopolitical prize that the U.S. and others have eyed for greater than 150 years. It’s much more worthwhile because the Arctic opens up extra to transport and commerce.
None of that takes into consideration the distinctive look of the ice-covered island that has a few of the Earth’s oldest rocks.
“I see it as insanely beautiful. It’s eye-watering to be there,” mentioned Holland, who has performed analysis on the ice greater than 30 occasions since 2007. “Pieces of ice the size of the Empire State Building are just crumbling off cliffs and crashing into the ocean. And also, the beautiful wildlife, all the seals and the killer whales. It’s just breathtaking.”
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Initially Revealed: January 7, 2025 at 5:44 PM EST
