“People, you should all be familiar with Jack Howard, my colleague at IMU. At least from the TV news.” Jack looked distinctly uncomfortable, and Macleod gestured to the other three. “Dr. Maria de Montijo and her graduate student Jeremy Haverstock from Oxford, though he’s originally from the States. Costas you already know.”
They gazed with evident curiosity at Jack, a face familiar even to those who did not know him personally. Costas grinned at a few old friends, several of whom had got to know him very well when he had attended the project briefing several weeks previously at the IMU campus in Cornwall.
“We’re an international team, as you can see,” Macleod said to Jack. “Officially the project’s a collaboration with NASA and the Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland, and there are also a couple of guys from the International Ice Patrol. We’re all doing our own thing, glaciology, biology, palaeoclimatology, but we’re pooling basic resources. IMU provides the research vessel, NASA the satellite imagery and GSDG the aerial photography and laser altitude measurements. A lot of the work’s just monitoring, making sure the ice conditions are safe enough for us to get the samples we need. With the summer melt almost in full swing we’re working against the clock. I wanted you here for a quick meet and greet. Any questions for this group now, fire away.”
“I don’t want to detain anyone, so just a few,” Jack said. “The Greenland ice cap, the inland ice. Can we have a swift rundown on its age and significance?”
“Most of it dates from the last two hundred and fifty years, and most of the ice at Ilulissat is from the last hundred thousand years,” Lanowski said, brushing his shoulder-length hair from his face. “It’s an outstanding survival from the last glaciation of the Quaternary.”
“Meaning?” Maria asked.
“Meaning the Ice Age we all know about, the one that ended ten thousand years ago when the ice sheets receded,” Lanowski explained, sighing impatiently. “Quaternary is a geologic term encompassing the recent Ice Age, beginning about one-point-eight million years ago, encompassing many episodes of advance and retraction in the ice. We’ve been in one of those warm spells for the last ten thousand years.”
“So what makes Greenland so special?”
“There are plenty of glaciers around the world dating from the Ice Age, and of course there are the polar ice caps,” Macleod said. “But the Greenland ice cap is the last remnant of the continental ice sheets that covered the northern hemisphere until ten thousand years ago. It’s a fantastic window into the past, as exciting to me as any of your archaeological discoveries.”
“Which brings us to why you’re here,” Jack said.
“It’s still early days, but the results are very promising,” one of the Danish scientists said. “We’re mostly looking at air bubbles trapped in the ice as it formed, preserving a detailed record of atmospheric conditions in the Ice Age. The calving front is now exposing areas of ice formed very recently, in a cold snap just prior to the Great Melt ten thousand years ago. It’s an unparalleled opportunity, the first time any research like this has been possible.”
“Global warming has its uses,” Costas remarked wryly.
“We can’t turn back the clock now, so we may as well get all the science out of it we can,” the Dane replied.
“One question,” Maria said. “You wouldn’t get me going anywhere near that calving front we just saw on the glacier. How do you get your samples?”
“We drill cores, just like a sedimentologist or an oil prospector on land,” Macleod said. “Each band of ice represents a cold spell, sometimes hundreds or thousands of years. It’s a bit like dendrochronology, tree-ring dating.” Macleod turned and looked intently at Jack. “Which brings me to why you’re here.”
“I’m still baffled,” Maria persisted. “You’ve still got to get close up to the ice to drill a core.”
“All will be revealed.” Macleod beamed at her and started towards the door, nodding his thanks to the assembled group and turning to Jack. “Follow me.”
Seaquest II was marginally smaller than her predecessor, more economical on space to maximise fuel efficiency and endurance, but with a displacement of a little over seven thousand tons she was still one of the largest research vessels afloat, and it took them a good five minutes to reach the upper accommodation deck. Without stopping Macleod pointed at a line of cabins with their names pinned on the doors, their bags already visible inside. At the end of the corridor they walked into a room that occupied the entire forward end of the accommodation block, directly below the navigation room and wheelhouse. The layout had been Jack’s idea, providing a dedicated control and observation room for project staff, avoiding the problems of sharing bridge space with crew which they had recently experienced on Sea Venture in the Golden Horn. The room had a director’s chair set on a dais in the centre, a duplicate of the bridge radar screen, four computer workstations arranged in an arc radiating from the dais and viewing seats with high-powered scopes set up against the window, a continuous sloping screen that wrapped around the front and sides of the room. With the mist now lifted completely it gave them a dazzling view of the sea to the west, a deep blue expanse dotted with fragments of white, the low form of Disko Island just visible off the starboard bow and the Canadian shore of the Davis Strait somewhere beyond the horizon.
They had been followed from the lower deck by the shambling form of Lanowksi and by one of the Greenlander scientists, an Inuit woman of striking appearance who pointed to the coffee machine as they entered the room. Macleod grunted, then nodded and proceeded to pour them each a drink and hand round steaming mugs. Jack shook hands with the captain, a former Canadian navy officer who had spent a lifetime carrying out maritime patrols from the Arctic to the Gulf of Mexico, who had bounded down the stairs from the bridge to greet them. Jack would have time later to do the full rounds of the crew, many of them old friends and veterans of the first Seaquest, people with whom he shared a special bond.
The Greenlander woman sat down beside Lanowski at the computer workstation on the right-hand side of the room, positioning her laptop on the available corner of the desk and stacking her papers and books neatly on the floor to give the others space to stand. From the body language it was clearly an uneasy alliance, with Lanowski hunched directly in front of the main workstation screen surrounded by his papers, making no concession for her.
“I knew I should have brought my own hardware,” Lanowski grumbled. “Someone should have given these things a trial run before they installed them. I may as well crunch the numbers by hand.”
Jack raised his eyes at the woman and she forced a smile. “I’m interested in seabed biology; Lanowski does the simulations,” she said. “James paired us at the beginning of the project.”
She cast Macleod a malevolent glare, and he quickly turned to the others. “I’m sorry. I should have introduced you. This is Dr. Inuva Nannansuit, with the Geological Survey. She’s a native of Ilulissat, the town on the headland, so she grew up with the glacier in her backyard. She’s been a fantastic addition to the team.”
“So what have we got?” Jack said.
“It’s behind the stern, but the captain’s swinging the ship round to give us a broadside view to starboard. It’ll be a few minutes yet. We’re using the dynamic positioning system, as we don’t want water movement from the main screws to disturb what you’re about to see.”
“That berg out by the island, dead ahead of us now,” Maria said, pointing towards the ship’s bow. “It’s got a streak of black on the top. Is that ancient sediment from the glacier?”
“Well spotted, but no,” Macleod said. “If you look at the berg, it’s smooth and rounded, like a sculpture, quite different from the jagged and fissured bergs we saw when we flew over the fjord.”
“It must have rolled,” Costas said.
“Correct. We watched it happen last night. One of the most awesome sights you can imagine, a quarter of a million tons of ice doing a somersault in the water. You do
n’t want to be anywhere near one of those babies when that happens.”
“Of course,” Maria exclaimed. “That smear is from the sea floor!”
“Exactly. When we arrived two weeks ago that berg was butted up against the threshold on the north side of the fjord, but we already knew from side-scan sonar that the submerged part had become eroded and lost much of its mass. It was only a matter of days before it would roll, and we kept well clear. Some of the bergs make it out that way, others get pushed upright over the sill. You can always tell from whether they look like Henry Moore sculptures or Disneyland ice castles.”
“You mean like that one,” Jack said.
They followed his gaze to starboard as a vast wall of ice came into view, about a quarter of a mile distant and clearly taller than the superstructure of the ship. It had the same contorted and jagged face as the front of the glacier, riven with veins of deep blue where meltwater had frozen inside crevasses, except for a wide flat area in the middle where it sloped down smoothly from the summit. The berg was immense, at least a quarter of a mile across, and blocked a large stretch of the entrance to the fjord along the line of the underwater threshold.
They stared in awe until Macleod broke the silence. “Remember, three-quarters of that thing’s underwater. You’re looking at a cubic kilometre and a half of frozen water, at least a million and a half tons.”
Costas let out a low whistle. “That’d keep all the bars in the world in ice well into the next century.”
“A single day’s outlet from this glacier would be enough to supply New York with water for a year. Twenty million tons a day. We’re talking global impact here.”
“Tabular bergs of this size are pretty rare in the Arctic,” Inuva said. “We think it’s atmospheric warming again, resulting in the glacier receding to a point where larger fractures occur. It’s the biggest berg I’ve seen here in my lifetime.”
“Why hasn’t it broken up?” Costas said.
“It’s had one major calving event, where you can see that smooth face,” Macleod said. “But the core’s unusually compact, solid glacial ice you’d crack only with explosives. It’s ideal for us. That face calved back to the core ice, so it’s relatively safe to work under. If you look closely you’ll see the drilling team in a couple of Zodiac inflatable boats out there now.”
“I don’t understand it.” Jeremy had been quietly absorbing everything since arriving on the ship, but had now recovered his normal inquisitiveness. “What’s to stop that thing tumbling over and crushing them?”
“That’s where the conditions really work in our favour,” Macleod said enthusiastically. “Without the pressure of the ice tongue behind them, bergs trapped on the sill are a lot safer to work on. The glacier itself is way too dangerous for coring, especially now that it’s flowing at such a rate. Bergs floating down the fjord are out of the question because they’re moving, and once they’re beyond the fjord they’re not only moving but are more liable to tumble. So a relatively fresh berg trapped on the sill is ideal for us. It’s a unique opportunity, but the window is closing fast.”
“How long has it been there?” Jack said.
“About three months. Lanowski’s run a simulation that shows it processing down the fjord and jamming against the threshold. Any chance of seeing it?”
“You’ll be lucky.” Lanowski muttered irritably to himself as he tapped a sequence of keys, and then visibly relaxed. “Finally.”
The screen displayed a 3-D isometric simulation of the fjord, with the glacier at one end and the arc of the threshold at the other. The berg was shown perched perilously on the sill, its vast bulk underwater now visible but with the seabed dropping off to even greater depths on either side.
“You can see the scour channel,” Inuva said. “That groove in the seabed leading up the threshold. As they grind along the bottom, the bergs pulverize the seabed, crushing everything to powder. It creates a sterile biotope, devoid of life. But the sampling we’ve been able to do here shows something else, that it actually benefits the diversification of species, allowing life to regenerate like a forest after a fire. And there are other pluses. James said you saw a berg calving as you flew in. Each time that happens, the upwelling brings up a host of nutrients. These were incredibly rich fishing grounds for my ancestors.”
“A biologist,” Lanowski muttered. “Just what we need.”
Inuva glared at Lanowski, and Jack quickly moved on. “How stable is that thing?”
“I created a simulation of ice conditions in the fjord over the planned period of the project, from two weeks ago ending tomorrow.” Lanowski said. “Everything’s happened exactly as I predicted. This should give you an idea of what we’re looking at.” He pressed a key and they watched as the screen sped through several dozen images on the same backdrop, showing the glacier receding alarmingly and a procession of bergs tipping over the threshold.
“A few years ago that would have been a whole season. Now it’s two weeks.” Lanowski pushed up his glasses and peered rheumily at Jack. “At the moment, the berg’s fine. There’s diurnal fluctuation in the grounding line, of course, about three metres as the tide goes up and down, and eventually the abrasion will knock off enough ice at the bottom to unbalance the berg. Right now the worst-case scenario is a major calving event, losing a lot more ice underwater than above, making the berg top-heavy. Then, say at high tide, we get an earthquake, or a storm, or ice from the glacier coming down the fjord and pressing from behind. That could push the berg against the sill and topple it.”
“What are the odds?”
“We’re not predicting any big ice coming down the fjord for at least a few days. An earthquake’s pretty well out of the question. A storm’s a possibility. There’s a local freak storm that could affect water movement against the threshold.”
“A piteraq,” Inuva said quietly.
“A what?” Costas asked.
“A piteraq. Caused as cold air tumbles down the ice cap and meets the warmer air of the sea.”
“Of course. James mentioned it as we flew in.”
Lanowski ignored them and carried on. “But there haven’t been any storms of the magnitude needed for almost seventy years. The last one recorded was in 1938.”
“What about calving?” Jack said.
“That’s where the simulation runs dry,” Lanowski said. “I just can’t predict it.” He looked at the floor in consternation, as if the limitations of science were his own personal failing, then relaxed his shoulders and gave Jack a defeated look. “All I can say is that the chances increase with the summer heat, especially now with the twenty-four-hour Arctic summer daylight. Forty-eight hours down the road I’ll be recommending that all work at the berg cease and advising the captain to reposition Seaquest II at least two miles farther offshore.”
Macleod turned to Jack with a sense of urgency in his expression. “All the more reason for us to get on.” He nodded thanks to Inuva, handing her a two-way radio from the command chair, which she took out of earshot through the side door on to the deck wing. “While Inuva sets up the final part of your tour, I think we’re ready to show you what this is really all about.” He tried and failed to catch Lanowski’s attention, then led them to a workstation on the other side of the room where a large man in a checked shirt and jeans was positioning a long metal tube like an oversize map case.
“Don Cheney, senior glaciologist from NASA,” Macleod said. “Don, show us what you’ve got.”
They quickly shook hands and stood behind the table and computer monitor. Cheney carefully pulled out an inner cylinder partway from the case, a transparent plastic tube about three feet long and six inches in diameter, and laid it on the table in front of them. He sat down at the workstation and leaned forward on his elbows, tapping the tube with a pencil and speaking in a low Texan drawl.
“For anyone who hasn’t seen one, this is an ice core,” he began. “Came out of that berg yesterday. Mostly glacial ice, the cloudy-looking stuff with t
iny bubbles in it, but also bands of clearer blue meltwater ice. We’ve got one meltwater band with modern contaminants in it, atmospheric hydrocarbons from factory and engine emissions. Some time in the last century that glacier opened up, then snapped shut pretty quickly. It happens. We’ve traced the fracture line up to the surface of the berg, the one relatively weak point in the core.”
“We thought of using explosives to crack the berg along that line, then pretty quickly ditched the idea,” Macleod said. “It would probably have destroyed what we’ve found.”
“Which is?” Costas asked.
Cheney drew the tube about two feet farther out of the casing and pointed at it. “We were about to pull the corer out yesterday and wind down the project, but then one of my NASA guys spotted this.”
The final part of the core was totally different from the bands of ice, a mass of black and brown fibrous material about eighteen inches long.
“It’s nothing to do with seabed sediment this time,” Macleod said.
“It’s wood!” Costas exclaimed.
“Correct. Embedded in an ice layer about a thousand years old, from another sealed-up crevasse. The structure’s very compacted, and some of it even looks carbonized, whether through burning or decay we can’t tell yet. But we think we’ve got about a thirty-year tree-ring sequence. I had another core from the same spot air-freighted back to Cornwall in the Embraer that brought you in this morning. We should have the results from the IMU dendrochronology lab this evening.”
“It couldn’t be a local tree trunk,” Costas said, shaking his head. “There’s no tree this big growing anywhere in Greenland, let alone finding its way on top of the ice cap.”
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