Greenland's prosperity:
13 March 2009
One of the most vivid symbols of global warming is the torrents of water that drain from Greenland,s ice sheet each summer, Greenland,s ice sheet represents one of global warming,s most distressing threats. The vast expanses of glaciers measure, on average, 2.5 kilometers deep and contain enough water to raise sea levels worldwide by about 8 meters.
Should they melt or otherwise slip into the ocean, they would flood coastal city's, submerge tropical islands and change the world,s atlases. More disturbing the infusion of fresh water could slow or shut down the ocean,s currents, plunging Europe into bitter winter.
The island,s ice cover has already begun to disappear, and hunters who use the frozen surface of the winter ocean for hunting and travel have found themselves idle when the ice fails to form. The whales, seals and birds they hunt have begun to shift their migratory patterns. The traditional culture will be hard hit, says the director of the department of Arctic environment at the University of Aarhus in Denmark. But from an overall perspective, it will have a positive effect. Greenland,s fishermen are applauding the return of warm water cod. Shops in the island,s capital have suddenly begun to offer locally produced potatoes and broccoli, crops unimaginable a few years earlier.
But the real promise is what lies under the ice. Near the town of Uummannaq, about halfway up Greenland,s coast, melting glaciers have revealed pockets of lead and zinc. Gold and diamond prospectors have flooded the island, alcoa is preparing to build more large aluminum smelters. The island,s mineral bounty is becoming more accessible, and with more than 80% of the land currently iced over, the hope is that the island has just begun to reveal its riches.
Offshore, expectations are even higher. The U.S. Geological Survey estimates that Greenland,s northeastern waters could contain around 30 billion barrels of undiscovered oil and gas. On the other side of the island, the waters separating it from Canada could yield billions of barrels more. And while Greenland is still considered an oil exploration frontier, Mobil, Exxon, Chevron are already ramping up exploration.
But while most of the world sees only peril in the island,s melt water, Greenland,s independence movement has explicitly tied its fortunes to global warming. In November, Greenlanders will vote on a referendum that would leverage global warming into a path to independence. The proposed plan, is expected to pass overwhelmingly. It would grant the first $16 million of oil and mineral income to the local government, with further revenues split equally until Denmark,s share reaches roughly the $680 million a year Greenlanders currently receive from the Danes. Then there would be no further economic obstacles to independence.
However Greenland's prosperity could be short lived. As global temperature increases, the accompanying changes in rainfall, evaporation and sea ice cover will slow down the formation of the deep water current in the North Atlantic.
This falling column of cold, salt laden water pours itself to the bottom of the Atlantic, where it forms an undersea river forty times larger than all the rivers on land combined, flowing south down to and around the southern tip of Africa, where it finally reaches the Pacific. Amazingly, the water is so deep and so dense because of its cold and salinity that it often doesn't surface in the Pacific for as much as a thousand years after it first sank in the North Atlantic off the coast of Greenland
The out flowing undersea river of cold, salty water makes the level of the Atlantic slightly lower than that of the Pacific, drawing in a strong surface current of warm, fresher water from the Pacific to replace the outflow of the undersea river. This warmer, fresher water slides up through the South Atlantic, loops around North America where it's known as the Gulf Stream, and ends up off the coast of Europe. By the time it arrives near Greenland, it's cooled off and evaporated enough water to become cold and salty and sink to the ocean floor, providing a continuous feed for that deep sea river flowing to the Pacific.
These two flows. Warm, fresher water in from the Pacific, which then grows salty and cools and sinks to form an exiting deep sea river are known as the Great Conveyor Belt.
If the Great Conveyor Belt, which includes the Gulf Stream, were to stop flowing, because of the change in salinity and temperature the result would be sudden and dramatic. Winter would set in for the eastern half of North America and all of Europe and Siberia. Should this happen it would deal a crushing blow to Greenland's new found wealth and hopes of independence.
