- 4 hours ago
Greenland
Category
🛠️
LifestyleTranscript
00:05Greenland is a remote frontier land dominated by ice.
00:10This place is raw, it's rugged, and this is the essence of the extreme north of Greenland.
00:17It's the biggest island on the planet, but home to less than 60,000 people.
00:23These dogs are absolutely key to the Inuit hunting.
00:28There are still indigenous communities surviving in one of the most extreme environments on Earth.
00:46It would be easy to think that this distant land of ice doesn't matter to your eye.
00:54But the future of Greenland will impact on us all.
00:59If the entire ice sheet were to melt, global sea level would rise by seven metres.
01:07My name is Stuart McPherson, and I'm on a quest to travel north.
01:12This is it, the end of the realm of man.
01:16To the very limit of human civilisation and beyond.
01:20People have been coming here for thousands of years.
01:23And find its stunning wildlife.
01:25The sheer abundance of life here is absolutely staggering.
01:34And I'm going to find out how climate change is reshaping the lives of not just the people who live
01:41in this extraordinary landscape.
01:43This is millions and millions of tonnes breaking away.
01:47But the whole planet and the very future of humanity.
02:05Greenland sits on the top of the world between the Atlantic and Arctic oceans.
02:11And it's absolutely dominated by a vast ice sheet.
02:18I'm a geographer and field biologist.
02:21And I'm going to explore the critical role this ice sheet plays for all life here.
02:28Only the very margins of this land escape the ice that covers an astonishing four-fifths of the island.
02:38The narrow terrain around the coast is mostly barren and rocky tundra.
02:44But you're never far from the edge of the ice.
02:48This ice has experienced record melting in the last few decades.
02:53And I want to find out how global warming is profoundly affecting the country's climate and way of life.
03:08And I want to find out how global warming is now.
03:09Greenland is the biggest island in the world.
03:12It's over two and a half thousand kilometres from top to bottom.
03:18Although it's been part of Denmark for several hundred years, it gained the right to self-rule in 2009.
03:29Its icy landscape makes it feel like I've stepped into another universe.
03:35But as remote as Greenland's ice sheet is, it matters to everyone on the planet.
03:43Wow!
03:45This is the Greenland ice sheet.
03:47The second largest ice sheet in the world.
03:50It covers an area of about 1.7 million square kilometres.
03:55And within it is locked up about 2.8 million cubic kilometres of water.
04:01It's one of the best places in the world to see the impacts of a warming climate.
04:06But to do that, we've got to climb onto it.
04:08And that means kitting up.
04:12My plan is to trek out across the ice sheet and spend the night there.
04:17And to do that, you need to be prepared.
04:21In winter, temperatures here can plummet below minus 40 degrees Celsius.
04:29Luckily, we're here in summer, but even now the temperature is only a few degrees above freezing.
04:40The easiest way to carry all the kit I'll need tonight is on a sled.
04:45Following this sled is actually surprisingly easy.
04:49I can really understand why Shafton and Scott and all the other great polar explorers decided to manhaul.
04:56It's much easier than carrying it on your back.
05:08Just a few kilometres walking on this ice sheet, and it's hard not to be overawed by its majesty.
05:16It's amazing to get your mind around the immensity of the ice here.
05:20It continues on for hundreds of kilometres in all directions,
05:24and in places it can be up to three kilometres deep.
05:27Entire mountain ranges can be underneath us.
05:30We just walk over them and not even know they're here.
05:32Just an endless sea of ice.
05:44Walking on this ice is inherently dangerous.
05:47Not only is there a risk of slipping, but there might also be fissures in the ice that could give
05:53way to hidden crevices.
06:00So I've left the sled behind to see if I can explore some of the holes opened up in the
06:05ice.
06:10Every spring, the warming temperature triggers the surface of the ice below the snow line to melt.
06:17By summer, crystal clear streams and lakes have formed from that meltwater.
06:28The ice has always melted in the summer, but what has changed is the ever-increasing rate at which it's
06:35happening.
06:38This is not a place where you want to lose your footing.
06:52It's very cold now.
06:56And it's only going to get colder tonight.
07:02This will be one of the most extreme places I'll ever spend the night.
07:07So my first priority is to be prepared for the cold.
07:16Okay, so here we are for the night on the ice sheet.
07:19Obviously beneath the tent, it's solid ice and the ground is, well, absolutely freezing.
07:24So the only way you can sleep here is by having a thick foam insulative mat, then an inflatable air
07:31-filled one, and then a thermal sleeping bag.
07:34And hopefully that will keep me warm for the night.
07:37So sweet dreams and see you in the morning.
07:46It turns out that the cold wasn't the only issue for me.
07:51It's high summer in this land of the midnight sun.
07:54And I've forgotten one key piece of kit.
07:58Oh, my God, it's like two in the morning.
08:01It's bright sunlight outside.
08:03I just can't sleep.
08:05I mean, it's like day.
08:06I wish I'd just brought one of those eye mask things and could have had a bit of night's sleep.
08:12But it's so hard to sleep here.
08:21I need to get going and set off for what I've really come here to see.
08:27It's astonishing how remote it feels, just a few kilometres into the ice sheet.
08:39I'm glad I've got these crampons to keep my footing in this highly treacherous landscape.
08:49There's total silence.
08:52No electricity, no sound, nothing but the white and blue and the noise of my own feet.
09:23Just a few months ago, this would have been a continuous sheet of ice.
09:32But now look how quickly the ice has melted into rivers that carve out ice valleys, creating blue pools of
09:40water on the surface of the ice sheet.
09:47But the Arctic is heating at a much faster rate than the rest of the planet.
09:52And this melting ice sheet is now the main factor swelling the Earth's oceans.
09:59It's become one of the benchmark measurements for the march of global warming.
10:07The scale of the ice and the extent of the melt is pretty impressive down here on the ground.
10:13But to really understand it for the ice sheet as a whole, we've just got to get up into the
10:18air.
10:25I've charted a helicopter to take us over the ice so we can see what this looks like at scale.
10:58The ice sheet is the accumulation of snow.
11:02The ice sheet is the accumulation of snow.
11:02It's built up over thousands of years.
11:05Coors have been dug down and drilled right through the ice and retrieved samples at least a hundred thousand years
11:13old.
11:14As the ice falls, the snow falls and the ice compacts, it slowly moves out to the coast, to the
11:21exterior.
11:21And that's what forms the glaciers that flow down to the ocean.
11:27Just the epic scale of this sheet is incredible.
11:31It goes on for hundreds of kilometres, way up into the distance beyond the horizon.
11:36Just nothing but a sea of white.
11:46You can just see a continual stream of ice coming off the main sheet itself.
11:50This is the ice board. It's dynamic. It's ever-changing.
11:54And this vast ice board and the glacier behind it is retreating faster and faster than ever before.
12:10The faster the ice melts, the faster it loses the benefit of what climate change scientists call the albedo effect.
12:19That's where the very whiteness of the ice protects it by reflecting the heat.
12:25But blue pools of water absorb the heat much more.
12:30And that means the more the ice melts, the more the melt escalates.
12:37Down there you can see these beautiful sapphire blue pools.
12:41These are the melt water pools.
12:43As the ice melts, the water accumulates on the surface.
12:47The problem is that the water absorbs the heat from the sun.
12:51The ice reflects it very, very efficiently.
12:54So the more water you have on the surface, the faster the ice will melt.
12:59So it's a runaway cycle that feeds into itself, ever-increasing the melt of the ice.
13:09And there's a reason why we should take this very seriously.
13:14If this ice sheet melts entirely, global sea level would rise by seven meters.
13:21That would wipe out every major coastal city on Earth and affect about two billion people.
13:38Of course, the first people to be profoundly affected by the loss of the ice are the people of Greenland
13:45themselves.
13:46I want to see what the changing landscape means for them.
13:54As most of the country is uninhabitable, the vast majority of Greenlanders live in the fjords on the southwest coast,
14:02where the climate is milder.
14:05So I'm heading for the town of Ilulisat, 350 kilometers north of the Arctic Circle.
14:18I want to see what it is.
14:18Ilulisat is one of the sunniest, driest settlements in Greenland.
14:22And with just under 5,000 inhabitants, it's Greenland's third largest town.
14:30It's a charming place.
14:32And as you walk around the harbour, you can see the boats that are part of an age-old way
14:37of life.
14:38Fishing is still one of Greenland's biggest income generators and the source of many people's livelihoods.
14:54Despite the lack of grass, everyone loves football.
14:58It's Greenland's national sport.
15:00The fresh air is making me hungry.
15:03Unfortunately, there are several good restaurants in Ilulisat.
15:07And I'm really pleased to hear they use fresh local produce from Greenland.
15:12Well, just looking at the menu here, I can see we've got an interesting selection of food.
15:17We've got seal, whale steak and muskok steak.
15:22So quite a bit to choose from and not your normal selection of meats.
15:26So it will be an interesting dinner.
15:36Thank you very much.
15:42Ooh, muskoks.
15:44Actually, it's got a very different taste from beef.
15:47I wasn't expecting that at all.
15:49It's really rich, really nice meat.
15:52It's delicious.
16:06This is really a place where if you want fresh food, you eat what the locals eat.
16:16If you wanted to cook for yourself, you can head down to the market where hunters and fishermen sell their
16:22catch.
16:27Today, they've got a typical selection.
16:31Over here, this is actually whale.
16:35I think this could be minky or possibly thin whale.
16:38You can see the coloration of the skin there, the big layers of blubber.
16:43And this is seal meat, possibly harbour seal.
16:47You can see this is the chunks of meat, the kidneys, some of the blubber and intestines.
16:53So every part is used.
16:58And what can't be eaten is used too.
17:06I've headed for the harbour, where local craftsmen still practice the ancient tradition of carving figures out of the bones
17:13of dead animals.
17:16In Greenland Inuit tradition, these are avenging monsters called Tupilaks.
17:24I've only been here a day, but it's pretty obvious that hunting is quite an integral part of Greenland culture.
17:30I think the further north we go, we're going to see a lot more hunting.
17:33And I actually come from a non-hunting background, but I think it's really, really important during this journey that
17:39we actually observe and respect the local cultures and don't impose our morals on them.
17:44Hunting clearly is a way of life here. It's totally integral to their survival. And we really need to observe
17:49that.
17:55So I'm going to see for myself where hunters go to find musk ox.
18:00I'm travelling south from Elulisat to the area of a beautiful lake called Tasaswatziak.
18:11And what a surprising landscape. It's warm, biodiverse and green.
18:18In fact, the whole reason Greenland is called Greenland is because back in the 10th century, this is where the
18:26Norseman Eric the Red landed when he was exiled from Iceland.
18:31Some say he used the name as a marketing strategy to attract more settlers.
18:37But here, finally, Greenland lives up to its name.
18:41And it's a landscape that supports a wealth of specialised animals.
18:46This vast glacial landscape might look empty, but this 500 square kilometer area is actually thought to be home to
18:54up to 25,000 musk ox.
18:56They're big animals, but Greenland is simply enormous.
19:00And also they've been hunted for hundreds and hundreds of years.
19:04So they're very shy and prone to running off when they see man.
19:07So to find them, we're really going to have to search.
19:15The Arctic wildlife have perfect conditions here.
19:19With dry south-facing slopes, a windy highland plateau for hot days, and wet fertile meadows in close vicinity.
19:30It's an area that can only be reached on foot, and it's rarely visited by man.
19:41Well, I never expected these conditions in Greenland.
19:45It's over 20 degrees C, it feels swelteringly hot down here in the lowlands.
19:49The musk ox, with their huge, long, shaggy coats, must just be baking.
19:54I bet they've gone higher up, right up onto those cliffs, several hundred meters higher, where it's windy and cool.
19:58I bet that's where they are, and that's where we've got to go if we're going to stand any chance
20:03of finding them.
20:14You can't see anything coming up.
20:14I'm here in this building.
20:15The green space.
20:15The green space.
20:17The blue space.
20:19The green space.
20:20The green space.
20:22The blue space.
20:23The green space.
20:25The blue space.
20:31The green space.
20:34and finally the muskox this is the biggest land herb of all alive today in greenland
20:41this is a big full-size adult male just amazing animal problem is though the wind is blowing
20:48downhill from here so he'll be able to smell our scent he's already noticed us he's staring this
20:55way so i'm going to go around these rocks around around there and see if we can get a better
21:02view
21:10although they're called ox muskox are actually more closely related to sheep and goats than cows
21:18shaggy survivors from the ice age they're beautifully adapted for the very specific
21:24environment in this part of the world in the spring and summer the green tundra provides a feast of
21:32willow leaves tussocks grass shoots and flowers to graze on and in the winter they'll use their
21:40excellent sense of smell to break the ice and rustle up a meal of sedge and lichen
21:52the next day it's time to get back on the road on my journey north
22:02i've returned to ilulisat to take to the water
22:06well we're now on our way to try and find the boat that we've charted for this journey
22:10the kissack no one really knows exactly where she is she came into port apparently yesterday
22:16so um the taxi drivers are just going to take us down towards the docks in the in the town
22:20and honestly just try her luck try and find her thank you very much
22:30well this is the kissack this is the vessel that's going to take me to the top of the world
22:35to the very far north of greenland and you must be anders yes hello
22:42yep that's it pleasure to meet you thank you very much
22:49the crew on this boat have years of experience negotiating greenland's treacherous waters
22:56even though it's summer this could be a dangerous journey welcome aboard this is the kissack
23:03she's going to be home for the next three weeks she's got an interesting vessel she was built in 1964
23:09she's been plying these waters for the last 20 years and she's got a wooden hole there's not many
23:14polar vessels left with a wooden hole and she's home for the next three weeks so welcome to the ship
23:29i'm undertaking a journey that's been a long time in the making
23:35an ancient journey that fills me with both excitement and trepidation
23:41my plan is to go from a lula sat right up the west coast of greenland as we go further
23:47north the
23:48towns will get smaller and smaller more remote and more inaccessible hopefully to reach this land up
23:55here called to lay this is home to some of the most northern human settlements on earth i want to
24:02find
24:02out why people live here how they survive in this extreme climate and why this is the northernmost limit
24:29for our species
24:30this ice fjord is so beautiful and became a unesco world heritage site
24:36in 2004. it's the birthplace of a massive collection of icebergs that have been carved
24:44from one of the most productive glaciers in the world the surmet kujalak glacier
24:50it's just impossible not to be awed by the beauty of the waters and its creatures
25:03this truly is the land of the midnight sun you might not actually believe it but it's one o'clock
25:08in the morning right now it's bright broad daylight and i don't know what three weeks of this is going
25:14to do to my internal body clock but then again when it's so beautiful and exquisite with these icebergs
25:19you don't want to go to sleep anyway so um i think i'll stay out the whole night watching them
25:30this glacier produces immense icebergs they can be hundreds of meters high with most of the ice
25:38below the water just the size of some of these icebergs is just incredible and the exquisite shapes
25:46and forms and patterns they've been carved into by the reaction of the water it just takes your breath away
25:52so beautiful
26:15the surmet kujalak glacier produces a tenth of all of greenland's icebergs
26:22during the summer months as the ice sheet melts around 35 billion tons carve off into the fjord
26:34as we approach the glacier you can hear the movement of the ice
26:43this glacier has been studied for over 250 years
26:48and it's directly informed our modern understanding of climate change being this close to the ice you
26:56can just feel the rumbling crashing ice at the back of the glacier it's almost like dominoes you can hear
27:03the chunks smashing against each other then every so often the face just collapses and gives way to a
27:21waterfall of ice
27:22wow the power behind this ice is incredible
27:26this is millions and millions of tons just locked up here just slowly breaking away
27:33and the ice that's falling it's certainly tens of thousands maybe even hundreds of thousands
27:39years old locked up here in this huge ice sheet and only now reaching the coast and being released
27:56across the bay from all this beauty in disco island is an abandoned mine
28:01with an important story to tell
28:21it's ironic to think that the coal mined here has contributed directly to the melting
28:55of greenland's ice sheet
28:56of greenland to 1972 the danish government exploited the island's rich resources
29:03employing over 1 000 danes swedes and greenlanders
29:14a whole infrastructure grew up around the mine
29:18by the 1960s the mine was producing 40 000 tons a year
29:24and its football team was top of the national league
29:33there were schools hospitals and even a cinema
29:40the old school is particularly poignant to see abandoned
29:46and amazing to think that it's where former greenland prime minister
29:50who picked clist went to school
30:05by the 1970s the mine was controversially deemed economically unviable and it was abandoned
30:22and coolisat is not unique over the rest of greenland and indeed the whole of the arctic circle
30:29the 20th century saw many attempts to exploit the abundant seams of minerals and oils in this region
30:37and it's not far across the greenland sea over in norway svalbard there's an intriguing old soviet mining town called
31:00pyramiden
31:01named after the pyramid shaped mountain towering over it pyramid employed hundreds of russians and ukrainians to mine for coal
31:11today it's mostly visited by seabirds and tourists and offers a fascinating insight into mining life
31:20the town is a time capsule from the soviet era and was developed according to the soviet ideas of an
31:28ideal society
31:30most of the buildings are still standing as they were when the residents left
31:34a bust of lenin still keeps a watchful eye over the town with a view out towards a beautiful fjord
31:43but after half a century of exploitation dwindling coal prices and tricky extraction shut down the mine
31:52the town was abandoned in 1998
31:57not surprisingly the british have also wanted a piece of the mineral action
32:03and over on the other side of svalbard there's the remnants of a mining quarry established in 1911
32:09by british prospector ernest mansfield one can only wonder what the 70 british miners made of ice cold svalbard
32:18but in the end it was a short-lived project the marble turned out to be vulnerable to frost
32:26and crumbled to dust in mansfield ships by the 1920s it was game over
32:37back in disco bay i'm at the site of another british disaster story
32:44in 1845 british explorer captain john franklin departed england with two ships hms erebus and hms terror
32:56for centuries european explorers had been looking for a navigable passage as a trade route to asia
33:03but they were always blocked by the ice franklin's mission was to make it to the last unnavigated
33:11ice-bound sections of the infamous northwest passage through the canadian arctic franklin reached these
33:19waters here at disco bay he met one whaling ship the whalers reported him and his men in very good
33:26spirits he then sailed north up through there off the map and into the unknown but shortly after the
33:36expedition met with disaster when both ships and all 129 men became trapped in ice stories of hypothermia
33:46starvation and even cannibalism and now the stuff of legend and eventually every single one of franklin's
33:55the expedition perished in this hostile environment
33:58so
34:24following in the footsteps of franklin's doomed expedition is daunting
34:29there are dangers everywhere and ice mist can roll in off the land making life at sea treacherous
34:43ironically warming sea temperatures mean that this passage will one day become a regular sea lane
35:04the sea mist adds a new danger to this journey we just can't see the ice look it can be
35:10just 50 meters
35:11away and almost invisible in this white horizon and not only that there could be submerged ice called growlers
35:18so we can easily run into and considering the kissaxe got a wooden hole we have to take this really
35:24seriously at all times we've got to have people looking out for the ice and just proceeding really slowly
35:42it's so eerie how the icebergs just roam out of the mist almost like ghosts and the really scary thing
35:50is that eighty percent of the ice can be under the water so we have to stay well clear away
35:56from the really
35:57big ones in case they've got bits projecting up which could just rip apart the whole of this boat
36:14it's easy to see how the tragedy of the titanic happened that famous ship struck massive iceberg
36:21if the conditions then were anything like what they are today the visibility and just the general
36:27haze the mist prevents you from seeing the icebergs until it's too late of course titanic didn't have
36:34the technology or the maneuverability that we have on the kissaxe today and so she just couldn't avoid that
36:54so much of the wildlife here icebergs provide a welcome resting place our captain has decided
37:01it's too dangerous to continue in these misty conditions
37:08so like these walruses we're going to take a break and moor up
37:24this snowy owl is using the cover of mist to search for young bird chicks
37:50this is one of greenland's many small islands and as visibility improves i can see that it was once
38:06inhabited
38:07this was settled over 1 000 years ago
38:26there's still evidence of simple dwellings and even crop growth
38:36people have long since left this island and now it's home to wildlife
38:40like these redneck phallar rope and ida ducks
38:52this is the ida duck's nest you can see the incredibly soft ida all around five eggs here
39:00this ida is wow you can barely feel it it's so soft and this has been collected for hundreds of
39:06years to make duvets and pillows sadly the hunting of ida's and other seabirds
39:11has dramatically damaged their numbers to near unsustainable levels great to see
39:22but i'm here on this island one of dozens dotted around greenland for one very special resident
39:44this is green island home to the largest arctic turn breeding site in the world this tiny bird
39:52undertakes the greatest migration of all animals traveling from here to over winter down in the
39:59weather sea off antarctica some 20 000 kilometers away
40:10this journey means this bird sees two summers a year and more daylight than any other creature on the
40:18planet and when it stops off here the arctic tundra provides the perfect home for its nests
40:33the chicks are perfectly camouflaged in this low tundra vegetation they're very very hard to find
40:48i just gently pick him up this won't hurt him and his parents will definitely come back
40:54this little guy is well he's not far from fledging he's a few weeks old and um he'll live for
41:01over 30
41:02years and during that time he'll fly over 2.5 million kilometers that's the equivalent of flying to the
41:09moon and back over three times it's amazing he weighs just a few grams it's just incredible to think this
41:17this little bird will fly such a great distance just in the power of its own wing we'll pop him
41:23back
41:23his mum and dad will come back good luck to you
41:36wow do you see that wow that was close these arctic turns have a good defense they bomb any intruder
41:48that approaches their nests and this guy is telling me very clearly that there's a nest somewhere
41:55near me and i should get out of the area so i think i better do just that
42:11back on the kissak i'm beginning to think about the next leg of the journey north
42:18i need to stop for some vital supplies so i'm heading for upanavik one of the last supply
42:24towns on my journey before moving into the high arctic
42:44upanavik is part of an archipelago near baffin bay
42:54it's one of the earliest settled areas of greenland with the first migrants arriving from north america
43:01around 2000 bc the town itself was formally founded in the 18th century when the danes first colonized
43:11greenland for large parts of the year it can only be reached by air during the summer a ship like
43:20this
43:21one down here will call in generally about twice a month to drop off supplies for the town
43:29during winter when the sea freezes over they get absolutely no supply ships at all
43:35and have to hold out on their own until the sun reappears
43:50right now the goods are in it's time for me to head to a local store
43:58well first thing i see in the supermarket shotguns and rifles
44:09i think i just stick to the groceries today
44:19in a way it's a miracle to find such bounty in this remote town
44:27and i'm not going to find anything like this where i'm heading next
44:33in the next episode we push north to the top of the world
44:38the conditions are getting much rougher and now getting into the high arctic the wild greenland
44:45i learn how to hunt with the inuit
44:48these sledges enable the inuit to travel vast distances over the snow and ice
44:52we're now moving north so we're moving into polar bear territory we discover there are dangers everywhere on the land
45:03on the water
45:07when they break apart they really can be lethal
45:13there's extraordinary greenland wildlife
45:19this valley is like a little oasis
45:23and we meet the only people who have truly mastered this hostile landscape
45:29this place feels raw and rugged and this is the essence of the extreme north of greenland
45:35and also mastered its wildlife
45:38so this also is polar bear and how the climate is changing their way of life
45:43it's more ice now the ice is melting yeah hard life
46:02it's me
46:20it's going to be
46:22you
46:22You
Comments