Icy Island Warms to Climate Change

"The tourists want to see glaciers and huge icebergs. They want to go dog sledding and see an igloo," he said. "I used to take them on 12-day dog-sled trips from here to Uummannaq. Now, I can't. There's no ice."

In the sparsely peopled far north of Greenland, Inuit wait for the Arctic Sea ice to close on the land each fall. They take their dog sleds and snowmobiles onto the ice to hunt food: seals, whales and polar bears. But the ice now takes longer to come.

One remote ice patrol station, Daneborg, keeps excellent records: The local hunters have long wagered on when the ice would close the summer's open water. A decade ago, the water was open for 80 days. Now it stays ice-free for 140 days, said Soren Rysgaard, a researcher for the Greenland Institute of Natural Resources.

"It's a threat to northern Inuit. Already we are seeing immense changes in weather, in birds, in animals," said Lena Holm, who is documenting hunters' observations for the Inuit Circumpolar Council. Unlike Inuit farther south who live by fishing, these hunters need ice to stalk their prey on foot.

In three recent years, some of the northern villages appealed for emergency food aid because they could not get on the ice to hunt. Their sled dogs, not eligible for government assistance, were saved by nationwide donations that bought European dog food to replace the missing scraps from seal kills.

"If a seal hunter can't hunt, what is he to do?" asked Alfred Jakobsen, Greenland's minister of the environment.

Still, he sees an upside: Global warming could be an opportunity to develop other resources. Four oil companies have applied to explore off shore, mining companies are sniffing out uranium and gold, and two aluminum companies want to build smelting plants and use the gushing glacial meltwater for hydroelectric power.

"Of course there will be negative impacts on the environment," Jakobsen acknowledged. "But we have to have an income. We cannot just be a living zoo. It would be hard for Greenland not to utilize these gifts from nature."

Calculating the outcome of changing nature is difficult, however. Stefan Magnusson, 50, a tall cowboy, is one of only two ranchers who raise reindeer commercially in Greenland. He sells the meat to Iceland and Canada.

He thought the disappearing snow would uncover more food for his herd of 2,000 animals. But he found that the melting top layer of snow refreezes at night, forming a hard crust that keeps the reindeer from the lichens below. And the now-spotty surface plays havoc with the snowmobiles and horses he uses to herd the animals. He muses about giving it up.

"This was a successful business" for 17 years, Magnusson said. "Until global warming."

Researcher Natalia Alexandrova in Toronto contributed to this report.