Warming climate threatens Greenland's ancestral way of life

SISIMIUT, Denmark, February 11 ------ Standing in his boat with binoculars in hand, hunter Malik Kleist scans the horizon for seals. But this February, the sea ice in southwestern Greenland has yet to freeze, threatening traditional livelihoods like his. "Normally the seals are on the ice or in the more calm waters. But today we had to sail all the way into the fjords to find them," the 37-year-old tells AFP.

The Arctic region is on the frontline of global warming, heating up four times faster than the rest of the planet since 1979, according to a 2022 study in scientific journal Nature, causing the sea ice to retreat. Seals rely on pack ice to give birth, to rest and for protection. Hunters increasingly have to sail farther along the jagged coast of Sisimiut, navigating into the fjords for several hours to find them.

Traditionally, hunters' boats would head straight out to sea, slowly pushing through the ice and creating holes that attract seals coming up for air. But without any ice, "it's too windy and the waves are too big," Kleist says. Last year was exceptionally warm in the vast autonomous territory, with several temperature records beaten, according to the Danish Meteorological Institute (DMI).

In December, the Summit Station, located at the height of Greenland's ice sheet, recorded an average temperature of -30.9 degrees C (-23.6 Fahrenheit), 8.1C higher than the December average during the period 1991-2020. "It affects everything we do. Because normally around November, December the ice comes. And this year there's no ice, so it affects our living a lot," Kleist says.

For the same reason, the government has also had to postpone the annual winter musk ox hunt that was due to start on January 31. There wasn't enough snow and ice to transport the massive animals that roam the Arctic tundra back from Kangerlussuaq where they are predominantly found, around 165 kilometers (103 miles) away. Greenland has no roads connecting its towns. That has left some Sisimiut hunters with less income than usual. "This time of year there is not much to hunt. So we rely on musk ox meat and skin," Kleist says. "Many of my fellow hunters are struggling with money right now."

Every part of the animal, from the fur to the meat, is either used or sold. The summer hunting season has therefore gained importance, enabling Greenlanders to fill their freezers to get them through the winter months, he tells AFP over a steaming bowl of fish stew. The shorter winter season has also impacted another key activity in Greenland, one that has become increasingly important to the tourism sector: dogsled tours.

In the Sisimiut neighborhood where the dogs are kept, their thunderous barking mounts as Nukaaraq Olsen, a 21-year-old musher, attaches them to the sled. Raring to get going, his 18 dogs are hard to hold back. Twenty minutes later, the group bounds off. But the road is bumpy, and several times Olsen has to get up to manually push the sled, stuck on the tundra's rocks in patches where there is no ice. "This year we had a lot of hot, warm days, even though it's December or January," he says. Other parts of the route are no longer safe to use, due to repeated melting and freezing of snowfall which causes uneven layers, he explains.

Source: manilatimes.net