Mugu Utuaq is a professional dogsledder. During the long summer months he hunts whales to feed his dogs while they are unable to race. Taking to the water in a small boat, armed with his rifle, Mugu Utuaq is on the hunt for whales. Utuaq is the fourth-ranked dogsledder in Greenland and lives in the small village of Kulusuk. During the increasingly long summer months his 23 dogs cannot race – but he still needs to feed them. Which is why he goes on the hunt for whales.
But today was not a fruitful day: “Today we went whale hunting. It’s important for hunters. We looked for them for a long time. But sometimes we just don’t find any,” he explains. 34 year old Utuaq says shorter winters are making his job increasingly challenging, but that life in Greenland wasn’t always this way: “When I was a boy there was a lot of ice, a lot. 10 months a year sometimes. But in the latest years there is only 4-5 months of ice.
In October everything used to be locked in ice, but now only in December, not before. Even January. And in April and May it’s already breaking up,” he says. The town’s mayor Justus Paulsen says that many residents are leaving to look for work elsewhere. “Beginning of 70s there was many people here, 500 people, now there is half, 200 people.”
The sparsely populated island, which is four times zones behind Copenhagen, became a Danish colony in 1775 and remained that way until 1953, when Denmark revised its constitution and made the island a province. In 1979, Greenland and its 56,000 residents, who are mainly indigenous Inuits, got extensive home rule but Denmark still handles its foreign and defense policies, as well as currency issues. Denmark pays annual subsidies of 4.5 billion kroner ($670 million) to Greenland whose economy otherwise depends on fisheries and related industries.
The island is part of the Danish realm and has its own government and parliament. It is so warm here, just inside the Arctic Circle, that on a recent August day in Kulusuk, the morning temperature reached a shirtsleeve 52 degrees Fahrenheit (10.7 degrees Celsius).
The mayor embraces the longer days and warmer temperatures : “Its more warmer than before and we like it because we have a longer summer.” However summer this year is hitting Greenland hard with record-shattering heat and extreme melt. By the end of the summer, about 440 billion tons (400 billion metric tons) of ice — maybe more — will have melted or calved off Greenland’s giant ice sheet, scientists estimate.
That’s enough water to flood Pennsylvania or the country of Greece about a foot (35 centimetres) deep. In just the five days from 31 July to 3 August more than 58 billion tons (53 billion metric tons) melted from the surface. That’s over 40 billion tons more than the average for this time of year. And that 58 billion tons doesn’t even count the huge calving events or the warm water eating away at the glaciers from below, which may be a huge factor.