I got a mail today from Lars Holst Hansen, deputy station chief during the summer season at Zackenberg Ecological Research Station, the one I visited in July, and a biologist with NERI, the National Environment Research Institute.
It seems there have been several polar bear visits to the station, right up on to the beach. Lars, many thanks for your short report. Here is one of Lars’ pictures.

PHOTO BY LARS HOLST HANSEN
You may well ask what a polar bear is doing on land like this at this time of the year, no ice in sight anywhere. Presumably he is hungry. It seems he also went close to some Zackenberg kayakers. I’m hoping Lars will send me the scientist’s  view of the visit.
Thanks again Lars, and look forward to hearing more from you.

It’s not possible to get close up to the Sermeq Kujalleq glacier by boat because of all the icebergs in the ice fjord.

It is possible to have a good look at one of the others though, Eqip (pronounced Eh-ri, I’m not sure how the transcription gets to Equip), if you’re prepared to spend five hours each way on a boat, which I did. That reminds you once again you’re definitely up in the polar circle. On a bright summer’s day, the wind is literally icy, as you travel out through the ice cover on the water, between the icebergs.

Boats have to keep a safety distance of 400m from the wall of ice. All around the ice on the water crackles and pops as the oxygen it contains escapes.

This glacier calves around every half-hour. There’s a rumble like thunder, a crack like a gun and a lump of ice falling down into the sound in an explosion of what looks like powdery snow. This glacier, too, is on the retreat.

The oxygen-rich waters are full of fish. Attractive for seabirds:

I saw little seals popping up between the icebergs. Some humpback whales also put in an appearance, although they were playing hard to get for the camera:

But the species of wildlife I had most contact with was undoubtedly the hardy Arctic mosquito. Yes, even in Ilulissat, surrounded by icebergs, there are mosquitos. Elke Meissner, the German honorary consul, told me you could set your calendar by them, mid-June to mid-August. No doubt that too, is changing. A climate-change induced extension of the “grozzie” season is definitely not something I’d welcome. In Zackenberg, I was told they’re only around for one month – unfortunately I picked it. The wind keeps them away, so the boat trip with the icy wind was a treat. But when we got close to land to pick up some people camping in the area of the Eqip glacier, they were all wearing mosquito nets and desperate to come on board. They brought clouds with them, but they didn’t survive long (for one reason or another).
Meanwhile, the captain chopped up some of the ice he’d taken on board at the glacier – the ship’s drinking water.

12 hours later, we headed into the harbour of Ilulissat.

Changing shades of ice at 2am

I just read an advertisement for “mobile tourist cabins”. The main advantage listed is that you can move them around to cope with climate change, so that you can shift them with the ice sheet as it retreats.
Climate change is very obvious here, although I’ve met a few people who still think it could be just natural fluctuation. Some of them are people in the tourist industry. Jens Laursen, the manager of tourism in Kangerlussuaq is unwilling to accept a connection between emissions from air travel and retreating ice. He is, of course, dependent on people coming to Greenland by air. Flying is the main way to get anywhere here, and the distances are huge on the world’s biggest island. In winter, dogsled has traditionally been the main means of transport, not only for personal use, but for instance for fishermen, who bring large quantities of halibut they catch by a long line dropped through holes in the ice over the snowy slopes to Ilulissat. But this is losing importance, as the season when there’s enough hard-packed snow for it to be viable is becoming shorter, and the winters become less predictable.

Accounts from the locals here back up what the scientists are telling us. Morten Rasch, the man behind the Zackenberg ecological monitoring programme, for example, stresses that the variability of the climate will increase. Yesterday I interviewed Karen Filskov, who comes from Ilulissat and now works for Destination Avannaa -the regional office promoting development in the huge region of North Greenland, Qaasuitsup kommunia. It’s said to be the biggest municipality in the world in terms of area, with 660,000 km2. She told me a series of winters in a row up to 2006 had been so mild the fishermen could fish from boats in the bay rather than taking the dogsleds to the ice. A lot of them then got rid of their dog teams, which are expensive to feed. Then the last two winters were particularly harsh. The water was frozen, and they had no dogs. It’s becoming increasingly changeable, she says.
Karen told me there are still 3,000 dogs in Ilulissat. Most of them now have to be kept outside the town centre – admittedly not far away. There’s a weird rugged rocky area dotted with little dog kennels and huskies – chained so they don’t run around fighting in packs – dozing in the heat beside their sleds.

The captain of the “Pearl”, a boat that takes people to see calving glaciers up the coast, told me he had not only noticed differences in his work on the water. He used to travel around, for instance to matches with his local football team, using the dogsled in winter. Now, he says, he can only rely on that for a few weeks rather than a few months. Incidentally, I talked to him with the assistance of Laali Berthelsen from Nuuk, the capital of Greenland.

She’s working here as a guide in between her studies. She’s one of the few people here who seems to have recognised the potential of learning languages and the tourism industry. Most of the people working as guides here are from Denmark or other European countries. It seems there’s still a lack of locals with the necessary language skills. Nowadays, the children (and there are plenty of them here) are learning English at an early stage in school, so perhaps the next generation will be different.
Laali also told me she used to get new skis every Christmas as a child in Nuuk. These days she has to go somewhere else if she want’s enough snow to ski.

Ilulissat’s glacier, Sermeq Kujalleq (Jakobshauen) and the ice fjord (Kangia) are striking witnesses to the process of global change (assuming you know what they were like before, that is).

The glacier discharges ice from the inland ice sheet into the sea. The pieces that break off are stranded in the fjord, where the water is fairly shallow, resulting in the spectacular jam of icebergs, some smooth, some jagged, over kilometres, right down to the mouth at Ilulissat. But the glacier itself has retreated massively, especially since 2001. Karen tells me the icebergs are smaller (although still huge), because the ice is also thinner.

Vuew flying over Greenland to the west coast and Kangerlussuaq.

There would probably be no people here if the US military hadn’t been allowed to build a base here in the 1940s. During the war it played an important role supplying the American forces. It was also an important facility during the cold war. It still has the feel of a base with surrounding camp in the “middle of nowhere”.

The US owned the base until the early nineties, then sold it to the Danes for a token price of one dollar – “as it was”. That included all facilities – and, I was told by a guide here, any pollution, unexploded ammunition etc still to be dealt with. There is a no-go area that’s too risky to enter.
Still, the airport has secured the existence of Kangerlussuaq as a hub for air traffic coming in and out of western Greenland. Tourism is on the increase, according to the official tourism reps, as the settlement – now housing around 400 people – is just 40km away from the inland ice, so a base for trips to the ice and expeditions going out onto it or across it. Still, there is not much in the way of an infrastructure, and it doesn’t make the impression of being a booming “resort” or crowded with visitors. The airport terminal has a “hotel” and a cafeteria like a school canteen. There is one shop and a restaurant with restricted opening hours by Lake Ferguson, a lake above the town where the US forces once had their “rowing club”. There’s also Europe’s 2nd most northerly golf course,(after one in Sweden), but the club house looked pretty shut and there’s not much in the way of greens. Definitely no rival to St. Andrews Royal and Ancient, I’d say. But if you’re up to it, undoubtedly one of the most unusual courses in the world.
I stayed at the “Old Camp”, originally the construction workers’ accommodation, now a hostel with basic facilities, 2.5 km on foot or by hired mountain bike from the airport and various prefab buildings that form the “town”? “Village”?.
NEEM has its headquarters here at the “International Science Support Centre” – a grand name for a long container-building that has offices and accommodation for visiting scientists all in one. NEEM is an international consortium which operates an ice core drilling camp three hours flight out onto the ice. I met Professor Christine Hvidberg, from the ice and climate group at the University of Copenhagen, at the science support centre here. She normally works on ice floe modelling, but she’s spending part of her summer – with husband and four children – running the logistics for the ice core operation here at Kangerlussuaq. All the equipment, and a regular exchange of scientists, have to be flown in and out on chartered American military Hercules planes, big enough to carry heavy equipment and able to land on skis.
The drilling operation is going to drill right down through the Greenland ice, more than 2.5 kilometres at the drilling site, to add to previous ice core drilling operations and find the oldest Greenland ice with the climate records it contains, which will help with models for predicting future developments.

Full background on the NEEM website

Muskox have been introduced to these areas from eastern Greenland, where they are indigenous, as I saw at Zackenberg last week.

We didn’t actually see any today, but since a quota can be legally hunted in this area, unlike the north-east national park where I was before, I don’t blame them for keeping a low profile.
Up on one of the hills above town, I got my first glimpse of the inland ice, apparently towering, shining white in the distance. That’s tomorrow’s programme.

In Kangerlussuaq, my attention was drawn to the problems of building on permafrost – or rather the problems when it starts to thaw, as is happening widely across the Arctic at the moment. The foundations start to sink. The wooden structure at the side of this building is actually a fridge, a cooling system, the rods coming out of the ground are iced over, to cool the permafrost under the structure and re-stabilize the building:

At the far end of the settlement, the huskies who pull sledges in the winter, are sweating in the summer sunshine, without any ice poles to cool them down. It’s around 4 degrees C in the morning (there is a change in temperature between morning and “night”) at the moment, but the round-the-clock sun makes the days feel warm.
Deutsche Welle reporters and Ice Bloggers always get the stories from the lead dog’s mouth:

I couldn’t resist this one:

Dryas, one of this region’s attractive flowers and also a source of food for Tomas’ caterpillars. I found a supply in the fridge, they’re starting to get scarce as the season progresses fast in this strong sunshine, and he puts them in glass phials with the creatures he is rearing as part of his experiments.

I found these growing down by the water, I’m not sure how to spell the name, so I’m not publishing without verifying, let’s make do with a look.
All too fast it’s my last day at Zackenberg Station. I’m the only one leaving this week, four new people are coming in. I’ve been put on standby all day, as the flight times can change at short notice. The Twin Otter coming in will be a famous one, the POF, apparently even the cover photo on one of THE books about these planes. Our logistics chief Philip is very excited about it. Its history goes right back to the Vietnam war, and it has been in many a scrape. I’ll ask the captain a bit about it later. I assume it has had a few spare parts since then.

Conditions seem idyllic, although the forecast says it’s likely to rain a little. No signs of any deterioration so far, as I sit on the bench outside the kitchen hut and catch up on my reading.
Lars and Philip keep reminding me things can change quickly up here. The plane has now radio’d it will be in at 15.26 (not a minute earlier or later!). I have everything ready. Then, at 15.10, although the sun is still shining, a wind comes up all of a sudden that is blowing things over, even chairs, and I have to beat a hasty retreat. People start running to secure anything that can blow away.

I think the little plane will never be able to land in this. Clearly I have no idea of the power of the “POF” and her Captain Jonas and his co-pilot. Although they asked me later when the storm had blown up at Zackenberg, because it had been fine until then, they come in without a problem.

The jackets are on, hoods up.

Scientific chief Lars battles the wind and makes his way to the runway.

Everyone who’s not out in the field heads towards the plane for the ritual farewell and welcoming of the new people.

The plane has landed, buffeted by the wind.

The Ice Blogger has to be photographed about to leave the station on the famous POF. I could feel it shaking in the wind as I leaned against it.

Time to say a very rushed goodbye in the excitement and off we went, two pilots, me and 3 men to be dropped off at Daneborg, the coastal military base, to be transported on further north to repair a remote hut. Daneborg will be the next stop.