Greenland Melting: The End of the End of the World

For a few minutes, the only sound is the shovels cutting into the pit. There are four grad students digging. They work from inside the hole, which is waist-deep but too stretched — about 15 feet — to make you think of a grave. It looks more like an archaeological excavation.

Liam Colgan, one of the grad students, stops and leans on his shovel and says, "It's retardedly hot right now."

Another grad student, Dan McGrath, who is from White Plains, New York, glances over his shoulder and says, "I feel like I'm at Jones Beach."

Colgan says, "This is enjoyably warm."

It's actually only a few degrees above freezing. But given the fact that it is early May and we are standing in the middle of the Greenland ice sheet, at a point approximately 3.5 latitudinal degrees — 155 miles — north of the Arctic Circle, then yes, it's hot: enjoyably, retardedly, unnaturally, ill-bodingly, possibly panic-inducingly so. Last summer's melt season in Greenland was the most severe on record, and it didn't get this warm until June.

We've all shed our hats and gloves and stripped off several layers of North Face and fleece. I've pushed up the sleeves of the two thermal undershirts I'm wearing, but I still feel sweaty, and I'm not even digging. All afternoon, the sun has been simultaneously beating down on our heads and reflecting back into our faces. The glare off the endless white of the glacier makes mirrored goggles and copious amounts of sunblock a necessity.