With its impenetrable icy blanket covering 80 percent of the country, measuring
more than 650,000 square miles and averaging 1.6 miles thick, the Greenland Ice
Sheet was once assumed to be, well, too big to fail.  

Now many members of the scientific community believe the Greenland Ice Sheet to
be in imminent danger of sustaining potentially irreparable damage. Damage that
could directly and dramatically impact many critical aspects of life on our
planet, including where and how people live, what they eat, the plants and
animals around us, our climate, and how financial resources are used.

Simply put, average world temperatures are rising and the ice is melting. Teril
Lindquist Turner reports on what she discovered on a recent journey to Greenland
onboard the Hurtigruten ship MS
Fram featuring a gallery of
stunning images from Kayla Lindquist.

Melting in the Arctic releases carbon into the atmosphere while at the same time
pollution and other dust particles carried north by the atmosphere darken the
white snow and ice, crippling the earth’s ability to deflect the sun’s rays.
Combined, these and other factors have the potential to create a runaway cycle
of more heating and more melting with global repercussions.

Climate change affects us all, but National Geographic recently put the spotlight on
Greenland, calling it “Ground Zero for Global Warming.”

Hopefully your trip to see Greenland’s ice firsthand won’t be a
once-in-a-lifetime experience, but regardless, this is a journey you may want
not want to postpone much longer.

“We bear witness to a pivotal moment in Earth’s climate history with Greenland
at the epicenter of that change — as its glaciers react to the planet’s
warming.” – Dr. Jason Box

Click here for a peek at what Greenland’s icy landscape holds
in store for the curious and concerned traveler…

Text by Teril Lindquist Turner. Photos by Kayla Lindquist.