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Melting Greenland

 
Germany's Chancellor Angela Merkel is traveling to Greenland this week to discuss climate change with the island's Prime Minister Hans Enoksen as well as Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen. The two-day meeting is the first of three climate meetings on the chancellor's agenda. At the end of the month she will head to China and Japan to address the subject. Click for a glimpse at the effects global warming has already had on Merkel's first destination. The ice cap that used to cover the island is rapidly dwindling away. Scientists say that global warming has an increasing effect on the Arctic region with glaciers shrinking -- like these here in Kulusuk, Greenland, temperatures of the arctic waters warming, and permafrost softening. Scientists predict an increase of at least 2.22 degrees Celsius in the earth's temperature by the year 2100, if the current warming rate continues. One of the icebergs affected by global warming is the natural piece of art pictured here, located in Greenland's Scoresby Sund. Research suggests that Greenland's ice cap, part of which is pictured here, may not have been around forever. Samples dug up from deep beneath the floor of the Arctic Ocean show that 55 million years ago an area near the North Pole was practically a subtropical paradise. In a study conducted last year, scientists said their findings were a glimpse backward into a much warmer-than-thought polar region heated by greenhouse gases that came about naturally. Drop by drop, the sun carves away at this iceberg in Disko Bay on Greenland's west coast. New possibilities for oil drilling are among the side effects polar melt. Oil companies hope Greenland's offshore reserves could provide profitable amounts of hydrocarbons in the face of rising fossil fuel prices and concerns that known supplies may dry out. Scientists say the ice sheet that covers much of Greenland is thinning. Many blame global warming, predicting a three-foot rise in ocean levels by the end of the century through a combination of thermal expansion of the water and the polar ice melt. These two fishing boats near the Jakobshavn ice fjord in Ilulissat, Greenland, have to travel cautiously amidst the chunks of ice that have broken away into the area. The residents of Ilulissat in Greenland can practically watch the shrinking of the iceberg from their living room windows. The bay is littered with chunks of ice that have broken away from larger icebergs. These sled dogs have always had Greenland's snow-less summers off, but some fear their enforced breaks may last longer if climate change continues.
 

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