This had become an exclusive resort. Access was provided by an eight-seater Bell helicopter commuter service operated by Greenland Air. The nearby airport at Kulusuk, where the helicopters collected their passengers, had been modernised to cope with additional tourist traffic. The hotel, a comfortable three-star operation, was at capacity – as it had been for the past few tourist seasons. Everyone wanted to see the glaciers before they disappeared.
Tasiilaq, a picture postcard village, was Trip Advisor’s most highly recommended destination for iceberg and glacier tours but had a troubled community.
Since reports of the threat of Greenland’s melting glacier became world news, with ‘Project Masters’ topping the list of most Googled phrases for many months, Greenland’s population of 57,000 were inundated with tourists. While direct flights from Europe and North America were a boon for the local economy, they also caused significant problems. The country’s transport infrastructure could not cope with the invasion of well-heeled visitors and their expectations. Tasiilaq was a typical settlement where investment in tourism facilities couldn’t keep ahead of demand.
The guide fancied himself as an expert in climate science, despite the fact he was a third-year law student in the University of Aarhus. After all, he had studied the literature. Expert or not, he didn’t lack confidence. He had the patter off by heart.
‘Ice is melting for a simple reason. The Arctic is warming faster than anywhere on the planet. As the ice vanishes its reflectivity changes. As you may know, snow is the most reflective substance known in nature. Clean fresh snow reflects away about ninety per cent of the sunlight that hits it. But as the ice softens its structure changes, lowering the reflectivity and absorbing more heat. As it melts away, more water and land are exposed, both of which are darker, and both of which absorb still more heat. This, in turn, melts more ice, creating a feedback loop that has been accelerating in Greenland. Just look at the astonishing vista outside. You may be glad to experience a fine sunny day, but this is not good news for the planet.’
‘When is the trip starting?’ Interjected one of the tourists.
She was a glamorous twenty-something dressed head-to-toe in designer clothing. The guide knew she would freeze as thin silks and cottons, and slip-on Prada shoes were totally inappropriate for the six-hour trip that lay ahead. ‘I must remind them to wear proper equipment before they set off,’ he said to himself.
She had little interest in science – or the climate for that matter. Like many others, she came to Tasiilaq to take the much advertised and highly rated skimobile ride to the top of the glacier. She didn’t need windy explanations. She wanted to get going. She wanted the promised ‘adventure’.
The tour guide was impressed by her multi-tasking. As she was speaking to him with direct eye contact, she was also typing a message on her iPhone.
‘Patience! We’ll be off soon enough. You’ll enjoy the experience on the glacier better if you have a good grasp of how things have changed here since thirty years ago. Back then, winter temperatures of minus twenty degrees Celsius froze the sea ice out in front of you. One could drive a car from this hotel to the airport at Kulusak some thirty kilometres away over the ice. The city council even marked out a road. No need for helicopters then! It is important to understand the pace of change. When you stand atop the three-kilometre-wide Johan Petersen Glacier later today and look around, it is possible that there will be nothing there a couple of decades hence. Witness the environment and respect it.’
The tour guide concluded his standard briefing quite pleased with himself. Most – but not all – of his group had done their homework and didn’t need convincing. A small majority really didn’t care and just wanted to get value for the adventure holiday they had been promised. Fair enough.
Within the hour, the tour guide and twenty of his charges, all suitably kitted out, were at the dock of the small harbour in the centre of Tasiilaq. They were transported in two small open boats across the fjord to a camp at the base of the glacier managed by the tour company. There they were allocated their two-person Yamaha skimobiles. Following a safety briefing, the ski bikers with local guides – all Danes – set off on the twenty kilometre journey to the top of the Johan Petersen Glacier. As this was early in the season there was good snow cover along the marked track to the top.
Also at the dock, another group of older tourists and families with children were embarking on a cruise up the Sermilik fjord, into which the Johan Petersen Glacier calved icebergs at a record rate. The Sama was an old iron-hulled ice-certified boat with a thirty-person capacity that could navigate its way safely through brace ice. It had clearly seen better times. The captain, a native Inuit from the village, swarthy and compact, had been doing this tour every day during the tourist season for the past decade. He was experienced. He knew the waters and the ice. Unlike the adventure tours offered to the young tourists this was a far more leisurely option. A routine voyage.
In his culture clocks and calendars were irrelevant. Time was dictated by the ice. In his Inuit dialect the word for ‘winter’ also means a ‘year’. Hence, he took a leisurely approach to getting the boat ready. The guide from the local tourism office shepherded her paying guests onto the boat. As soon as she completed the safety briefing, he put Sama into gear. Soon she was moving northwards in the strong current off the dock.
It took both tour groups around three hours to reach their respective destinations.
As promised, the view on the top edge of the Johan Petersen Glacier, looking towards the Sermilik fjord, at nine hundred metres above sea level, was breath-taking. Even the most cynical in the group could not control their emotions at the sheer beauty and rawness of the scene. It was unique, so vast, so white, so pure that it bankrupted the vocabulary of description.
The cameras on their iPhones were dispatching photos and WhatsApp messages to their friends across the globe. The most striking colour was the deep sapphire blue of the waters captured in dozens of small lakes to the rear of the glacier that peppered the icescape as far as the eye could see. As with all glaciers, there was a constant deep groaning and growling as the ice moved, twisted and re-shaped. Future icebergs calved off the front face of the glacier, usually preceded by a loud gunshot sound, and toppled into the Sermilik fjord far below, where the Sama was moored at a safe distance.
The boat’s passengers also had an astonishing view, but from a different perspective. They were situated four hundred metres opposite the glacier. The mountains of earth and rock that framed the glacier reached for the heavens where a few lazy cirrostratus clouds contrasted with the cold blue arctic sky. In the fjord, and in their midst, massive white and pale blue icebergs baring a thousand frozen teeth brooded among the smaller chunks and floes creeping in from wider waters. The late morning sun produced differing reflective colour effects on the face of the glacier.
They too were impressed with the raw beauty. Fewer WhatsApp messages were sent.
The previous week there had been two level 3.3 Richter scale earthquakes recorded twenty kilometres further east, with the epicentre under the vast expanse of the Johan Petersen Glacier. Significant jolts were caused as ice moved and collapsed within the glaciers and as millions of litres of water were displaced. Such was the sheer physical impact that these movements registered on the Richter scale themselves. These incidents had been commonplace in the few months since Project Masters’ findings had highlighted the hollowing out process of the Greenland Ice Sheet and the consequent accelerated collapse of maritime glaciers.
Of course, the Norwegian group’s guides and the Sama’s captain didn’t mention this in their safety briefings. While the tourist office had been alerted to anticipate small aftershocks, nobody was expecting a 6.5 Richter scale earthquake from deep within the glacier.
The shock waves generated at the epicentre of the earthquake cascaded violently through the length and breadth of the glacier. The bikers a
nd their guides stood motionless in awe as the landscape changed in front of their eyes. The growing vibrations rumbled noisily as they approached the top of the Glacier at speed. In a matter of seconds, a wide and widening fracture line appeared. Simultaneously, the blue sapphire waters from the lakes were tossed high in the air. The shock waves accelerated their way forward. A wave of meltwater and ice shards about a kilometre wide flew into the air.
A catastrophic collapse of the world-famous Johan Petersen Glacier was moments away.
The first hint the ski bikers had that they were in serious trouble was when a small fracture line appeared under their feet. In a split second the ground where they stood opened up to reveal a sheer ice cliff descending into the dark. The ground vibrated violently throwing everyone off their skimobiles. The rumbling noises intensified in a matter of seconds. An ice-cold wind kicked in. Cheeks prickled in the cold air that escaped from the abyss. The ski bikers didn’t have time to get to their feet, never mind plan an escape. The ground they were on collapsed into a steep ice crevasse far below. They were unceremoniously thrown into the ice abyss. Had there been anyone in a position to heed their screams for help, they could not be heard over the roar of the meltwater gushing through the fissures created by the earthquake’s secondary shocks.
At the inevitable inquest, it became a matter of debate whether they died first from drowning or from traumatic internal injuries as sharp ice fragments travelling at great speed cut them apart. One way or the other their departure was instantaneous. The bodies were never found so the cause of death could not be determined. The coroner concluded death was due to ‘misadventure’.
The Sama’s passengers could not see the deadly transformation that was happening behind the top of the glacier. They were not even aware they were in the path of an earthquake. The noise was deafening and disturbing, but its source was still a matter of conjecture. The din became over-powering: like being close to the thrust engines of an Apollo spacecraft. There was nowhere to hide from the noise.
They realised instinctively they had problems to cope with as soon as the seismic vibrations started to create large rippled waves, which tossed the boat like a cork in the ocean. The captain’s instinct was to raise the anchor and pull the reverse lever, which he did. He knew he had positioned his boat far too close to the sheer front face of the glacier for comfort.
Unlike the ski bikers, whose demise was almost instant, the Sama’s passengers witnessed the collapse of the Johan Petersen Glacier in slow motion. The initial shocks dislodged huge bus-sized ice blocks along the width of the glacier that cascaded like confetti into the waters below, creating hundred-metre-tall splashes that drenched the boat with muddy ice water. All the time the Sama reversed away. But it was too late.
The first visible cracks in the glacier appeared at the left edge, about half-way up near a craggy outcrop of soot coloured ice. What looked like liquid ice moved slowly down the surface of the glacier’s face. This displaced looser fragments, which, in turn, spliced the lower sections in a blitz of powdered snow and ice. The noise was unbearable. A high-pitched thunderous growl signalled something more dramatic was about to happen.
From an elevation of nearly a kilometre, meltwater was projected over the Sama, from a widening fissure, with an impact like a giant power-hose. The growing pressure of the water expanded the size of the fissure, which in turn caused more meltwater and chunks of dark grey ice to exit the glacier’s face with the speed of a jet propulsion engine. Similar cracks appeared at four other locations with the same phenomenon. The domino effect was instantaneous. No sooner did the entire front of the glacier collapse than the next ridge of ice burst apart with even more devastating effects shattering everything in its way.
The explosive effect of the systemic collapse of the Johan Petersen Glacier was the equivalent to two atomic bombs. Soon the entire area at the base and immediate surrounds of the glacier, along a line of three kilometres was showered with the avalanche debris of the glacier. A chunk of ice the size of Manhattan had cascaded into the sea.
The Sama’s passengers’ sense of impending doom was coloured by the sight of vivid twin rainbows that formed elegant crescents over the vast expanse of what remained of the glacier’s face.
This wonder of nature was their last living memory.
As more fissures appeared it was only a matter of time before the central part of the glacier cracked open from top to bottom. The impact was worse than a major dam implosion. The multiple tsunamis created by icebergs the size of football stadia being driven into the Sermilik fjord picked up the Sama and carried it down the water-filled fjord at elevation and at speed.
The boat capsized, righted itself and capsized again before it was thrown upside down the length of the fjord for twenty kilometres. Given the remote location of the Johan Petersen Glacier the only casualties there were the thirty souls on the Sama. Nobody was wearing a life jacket – not that it would have made any difference.
It took less than two hours for the entire Johan Petersen Glacier to fully disintegrate, with ice ten kilometres long and to a height of nine hundred metres displaced. This was the largest ever collapse of a maritime glacier.
The shattered shell of the boat was found days later by search and rescue parties thirty metres above sea level in a bay to the side of the fjord. The tsunamis – some reckoned the waves must have been over one hundred metres high at the start – had propelled it at over two hundred kilometres an hour until it came to its place of final rest. The thrust of the ice water removed any remaining vegetation on the shoreline. The fjord was stripped of all green shoots. What remained was polished undulating brown rock.
The torn bodies of half the passengers were found at many locations along the length of the fjord. They too died of ‘misadventure’.
As part of the detailed search and rescue effort, the volunteers also found dozens of golf balls embossed with the Norwegian flag. Two still functioning camera balls were retrieved.
While the death toll resulting from this major natural disaster was relatively low, the impact of this incident and at many other comparable glaciers was irreversible.
As soon as the news broke, Lars arranged to meet with Benny for a coffee in the Lysebu Hotel in Oslo to discuss developments.
‘Another tipping point has passed,’ said Lars.
‘Of that there’s no doubt,’ said Benny. ‘It’s only a matter of time before further glaciers collapse and disintegrate.’
‘True,’ said Lars. ‘We will continue our work next year at the Summit Station with an added degree of urgency and motivation. Much more research needs to be done.’
‘How’s Sean by the way?’
‘We have been in regular contact since the Atlantic tsunami hit Ireland,’ said Lars. ‘His production unit is at an elevation of over one hundred metres, so it was not damaged. And when the waves struck everyone was at work. Sean and his team are alive and well. But the countryside in Galway is badly flooded.’
‘What makes me so sad is the inevitability of what happened,’ said Benny.
‘What do you mean?’ asked Lars.
‘It has taken one high profile incident to prove what scientists have been saying for years.’
‘Governments do not respond until catastrophe face them. They don’t like dealing with inconvenient truths,’ said Lars.
Epilogue
The Atlantic tsunami hit the west and south-west coast of Ireland without warning. Electricity generation installations and communication sites were rendered useless within minutes. With all national communications silenced, and with no forewarning, the waves washed over the countryside, eventually petering out just short of Dublin.
The tsunamis generated by the offshore earthquake at La Palma were deadlier than their Atlantic counterparts. They travelled at a speed of seven hundred kilometres per hour across the deep ocean towards the British Isles. While the o
riginal height was three hundred metres, the crest was only thirty metres when it struck the south east coast of Ireland after six hours. It hit the Dublin Bay region twenty minutes later. The landslide displacement into the Atlantic Ocean of the Caldera de Taburiente and the entire mountain range of northern La Palma resulted in even more devastating secondary tsunamis arriving an hour afterwards.
The low-lying City of Dublin was washed away in the space of two hours. Only the iconic twin chimneys of the City’s power station remained fully intact. The La Palma waves, much higher, faster and stronger than the Atlantic tsunami, penetrated nearly fifty kilometres inland around the southern and eastern coasts of Ireland.
The triple-hit tsunami episode rendered huge parts of the country uninhabitable. By the time the flood waters had receded, all critical infrastructure, ports, roads, railways, airports, commercial centres, schools, the energy grid, telephone masts and hospitals, were shattered beyond repair as was all low-lying housing. Millions died.
Slowly, surely and noticeably over a number of subsequent years the collapse of the Greenland Ice Sheet, compounded by the rapid disappearance of the warming effects of the Gulf Stream, resulted in sea ice forming as far south as Dublin Bay initially. Soon the whole Irish Sea was frozen over.
The Iceapelago that was once Ireland began to form. The Arctic foxes were among the first of the new immigrants. They were comfortable in this environment. Ice was their home. Their hardship was mirrored by the humans they did everything to avoid. The humans of their nature adapted, adjusted and argued. They had no option. They survived, they built, they recovered. So did the Arctic foxes as they settled into familiar tundra conditions.
It began with ice and ended with ice.
The tale of the inhabitants of the Iceapelago has yet to be told.
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