pa r t i n g s h o t
wish you were here on the west coast of Greenland, 250 km north of the Arctic Circle, you can stand at the edge of the Ilulissat Icefjord.
This UNESCO World Heritage Site is the only spot (other than Antarctica; see page 8) where you can watch a massive ice sheet, glacial ice-stream and calved icebergs empty—in real-time, hi-def drama—into a fjord. See story on the Arctic, page 31.
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behind the scene
Greenland’s ILULISSAT ICEFJORD is huge (40,240 hectares huge). This is where Sermeq Kujalleq, one of the fastest and most active glaciers in the world, stretches from the Greenland ice cap into the sea, calving icebergs into Disko Bay and then Davis Strait, Baffin Bay and beyond. To stand at the edge of this river of ice, as it gurgles, crackles and shimmers, is like spying on a living thing. Or dying. It’s the last bit of the Northern Hemisphere’s continental ice sheets from the Quaternary Ice Age. The oldest ice here dates back 250,000 years, a Pandora’s Box of knowledge about climate change. —B.Sligl
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Just For Canadian doctors Winter 2017
barb sligl