“Everything changed after 1997,” says Karl Sandgreen, 45, who comes from the western Greenland town of Ilulissat. Before that, the sea ice covered the bay off Ilulissat until the end of May or start of June. “But it disappeared after 1997.”
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Climate change is progressing much faster in Greenland than anywhere else in the world.
In Ilulissat, this is evident in the icebergs up to 100 metres (328 feet) high, which calve from the nearby Sermeq Kujalleq glacier and then slowly drift out into Disko Bay in the Ilulissat Icefjord and from there towards the open sea.
Sermeq Kujalleq is one of the most active glaciers in the world. As a result of global warming and the associated glacier melt, it has retreated by more than 40 kilometres (24.8 miles) since 1850, and the trend has accelerated dramatically since the turn of the millennium.
Leading politicians from all over the world have travelled to Ilulissat to see the effects of climate change for themselves.
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