Environment
In Greenland, an Urban Heat Island Is Growing Fast
The country's almost laboratory-like conditions are a perfect place to measure the effect of human urban development on temperature.
Since the world started waking up to the reality of climate change, the way we see Greenland has changed. It has gone from being one of those almost mythically faraway and mysterious places on the planet, like Timbuktu, and become a very real part of the calculus of what will happen to the Earth as it warms.
We watch the rapidly melting ice sheet atop this huge Arctic island nervously, wondering what the water that streams off it and into the ocean will mean for coastal cities. We wonder how it will affect the Gulf Stream and the overall temperature balance of the Atlantic Ocean. We measure the pieces of ice that break off in units the size of Manhattan.