The Danish-Greenlandic Environmental Cooperation
The climate in Zackenberg, Greenland, the world
In northeastern Greenland, in the middle of the largest national park in the world, there is a research station near Zackenberg, the former hunting station. The research station is funded by the Ministry of Information Technology and Research, the Ministry of Environment and Energy (Dancea), the Institute of Geography at the University of Copenhagen, and the Home Rule Government of Greenland. The purpose of the station is to study the effects of climate change.
The snowy owl lives mostly in the high Arctic. Sometimes it migrates far away, as in this case where a snowy owl was found completely exhausted in Kangerlussuaq (Sønder Strømfjord).
"Snow is the deciding factor," says Hans Meltofte from the National Environmental Research Institute of Denmark, and director of the station for its first three years. He is currently responsible for the biological monitoring that is being done at the Zackenberg Research Station, which is located at 74°30' N lat on the east coast of Greenland, near Daneborg, the old weather station.
Even though the outer coast is only twenty-five kilometers away, this is a land station, and snow is the factor that determines pretty much everything. Determines how thick the ice will be in the fjord and on the lakes. Determines how many calves the musk oxen will have, and whether they will survive. Determines when the flowers bloom and whether they will have enough time to seed. Determines when the birds lay their eggs and how many chicks hatch. Determines the whole show. "Every one talks temperature. I talk snow," says Hans Meltofte dryly.
Zackenberg Ecological Research Operations (ZERO) consists of five wooden barracks and a few tents, which are the basis for a number of activities between June 1st and September 1st each year. The station has space for about twenty people. The activities take place within Zackenberg Valley and Store Sødal (another valley), in an area of 514 km2, which is defined by a watershed. Of this, a 40-km2 area is the object of intense study, the Zackenberg Valley itself.
In the time when fur trappers lived at Zackenberg, getting through the ice to the east coast of Greenland - if at all possible - could take weeks. Staying for the winter was unavoidable. No one could leave that part of the world in winter. The Zackenberg scientific station can only be manned every summer because the logistics are in order. There is a runway for small planes, a cook, a laboratory, a generator, a dinghy, and all the other trappings that are necessary for getting around safely in the field during the Arctic summer.
Right in the middle of everything"Our point of departure is that we don't know anything about the annual variations in general living conditions in the high Arctic - whether it's Greenland or any where else." Hans Meltofte speaks categorically, and is basically arguing for the station, which was established in 1995, after fourteen years of discussions and three trips to northeast Greenland. The participants were geographers, logisticians, botanists, moss specialists, lichen specialists, entomologists, etc. Grants from the Aage V. Jensen Charitable Foundation and the Danish National Science Research Council made it possible to reconnoiter all of central northeast Greenland to study the places that were biologically most interesting. It could neither be an area with unusually high biological productivity nor a bleak area. In a desert-like area they would not get enough data. It could not be an oasis either, an unusually fertile area. The latter would probably react to climate change. "We had to find a place that was in-between everything," says Hans Meltofte. "Inbetween north and south. In-between too much snow and too little. Not too close to the sea and not too close to the inland ice."
The mountain on Clavering Island, seen from Zackenberg in the National Park
The Arctic and climate change
It is a unique station. Unique because monitoring programs were set up from the beginning to support each other and the many research projects. The basis for all activities is the climate station. That is, a set of data that shows whether a given research project is done in a normal or an unusual year. Not just with respect to snow cover, but also with respect to a number of other climatic factors.
Hans Meltofte points out that systematic climatic measurements are vital for the work at Zackenberg. He has personally worked in twenty different areas in high Arctic Greenland, including Peary Land, far to the north on an expedition with Eigil Knuth, and has experienced the frustrations of not knowing if the snow was especially abundant or scarce in the given area that year.
That is why Zackenberg, from the start, was set up with a climate station, a geographical program and a biological program.
The Arctic and climate change
The research projects done at Zackenberg are usually of a longer duration. That way, a number of projects can support each other. Time series will be developed that can shed additional light on the interaction of many different factors. Living organisms can thus be used as a kind of measuring instrument.
Because of experiences at the science station in Toolik Lake in Alaska, record is also kept of the impact that the research activity at Zackenberg has on nature. Partly keeping track of how many people there are in the field, and for how long. Partly coordinating their activities, so that the researchers do not, literally, plod over each other and mess up each other's measure ments. Some day, the human impact on nature will be able to be calculated.
The time factor is very important. There are no long time series that document what goes on under normal circumstances. Not to mention what happens when the anticipated climatic changes start making themselves felt. And they are expected to be most extreme in the Arctic. A rise in temperature from 31°C to 32°C in Borneo will not have the same effect on the ecosystem as an increase from 1°C to 2°C in the summer in northeast Greenland. And further increases in temperature will heighten the effects to disproportionately. The Arctic system is robust from an ecological perspective, but it reacts violently to climate change. We are at the outer limits of where life can exist. The whole fauna and flora only exist in the Arctic because they are resistant to climatic changes, but there are unrelenting limits for the survival of plants and animals. Big changes can have dramatic consequences.
It is because of these expected climatic changes that a research station has been placed at Zackenberg. At first, the intention was to study the effects of natural variation in climate. The station would probably never have become so big, nor the work so comprehensive, if the global discussion of the greenhouse effect had not come to the fore. When climate change became a hot political topic, interest in understanding the consequences of the greenhouse effect grew.
"Our aim is to reach a point where the studies done at Zackenberg can be used to say what we can expect if climate models are correct in predicting more precipitation and higher temperatures," says Hans Meltofte. "What effect will that have on the musk oxen, on birds, on insects and on the exchange of greenhouse gasses between the tundra and the atmosphere? At the same time, we will hopefully be able to see some connection between the climates of different parts of the Arctic. The climate models give different predictions for different parts of the Arctic. For example, it is predicted that climate change in East Greenland will be completely different than in West Greenland."
Zackenberg, the old hunting station, was inhabited by Danish marine biologists for a time.
Nature is not passive
Twenty percent of the world's organic carbon is sunk in the northern tundra regions. And an escalation of bacterial decomposition would release methane and carbon on a big scale. In the exchange between the tundra and the atmosphere, there are three important greenhouse gasses: water vapor, carbon dioxide, and methane.
In a number of spots around the ice caps, the processes in the tundra are being measured. One of these places is near Zackenberg, where, each season so far, scientists from the universities in Lund and Copenhagen have been busy measuring carbon dioxide, water vapor and methane emissions from the soil layers over the permafrost zone.
The reason is that if the top layers of earth do warm up, it will put pressure on the permanently frozen soil underneath. That would mean an increase in the biomass that could release carbon dioxide and methane, the notoriously potent greenhouse gasses. By unit, methane is twentyone times more powerful than carbon dioxide.
The short version, then, is that when concentration levels of the greenhouse gas, carbon dioxide, rise, the general temperature of the earth rises. The permafrost layer gets smaller, and methane emissions increase. This causes global temperatures to rise even more.
Studying the production of methane from the tundra, Zackenberg.
Full moon over the inland ice. The shape of the moon is distorted by atmospheric disturbances, Kangerlussuaq, West Greenland.
The whole truth is actually much more complicated. Nature is never a passive recipient. To put it differently, there are a great number of feedback mechanisms - some that augment the mechanism described above and others that counteract it. That is why it is necessary to register and quantify as many of the process that take place in the tundra as possible.
One example would be the methaneconsuming bacteria that live in the top aerated layers of the tundra. These bacteria are adapted to a certain concentration level of carbon dioxide. If this concentration increases, the bacteria lose their appetites. So in this case, an example of a boost to the greenhouse effect.
In an attempt to predict the future, the people behind the tundra project have covered over some trial areas. This increases the temperature. By simulating the climate change that may be coming with increased temperatures, they can study what happens to the development of methane in the top layers of soil under these new circumstances.
The station is devoted 100 percent to investigations of climate change. They are not concerned about whether the climate changes are natural or created by humans. There are already 2000 climatologists heatedly discussing just that. Instead, what they do here is to register what is actually going on. They measure. These measurements can then be used by the people that develop climate models.
The significance of Zackenberg, then, is that through it, Greenland is doing its part to support international agreements on monitoring the effects of climate change in Arctic ecosystems. The Danish Environmental Protection Agency regards the ZERO program as a substantial contribution to recording climate change and its implications for the Arctic. Zackenberg is, therefore, an important part of the Realm's contribution to the Arctic research program AMAP (Arctic Monitoring and Assessment Program), and the climate change studies associated with it.
Hans Meltofte.
Dancea will, therefore, continue to support the activities at Zackenberg, and to work for the long-term security of the station's activities as the contribution of the Realm to monitoring global climate change.
The sea ice is melting
The series of marine biological studies that the National Environmental Research Institute of Denmark is doing in Young Sound, 25 km east of Zackenberg, is genuine cuttingedge research. Among other things, the studies focus on the circulation of carbon dioxide. The point of departure is that the average temperature of the globe has risen 0.3°C - 0.6°C during the last 100 years.
In Arctic waters, the sea ice is melting faster than before. Besides the reduction of the formation of new sea ice, large parts of the perennial sea ice have melted. As a result, there is less heavy salt-laden sea water than usual. This could have tremendous consequences on global sea currents.
The mechanism of the formation of global sea currents is as follows. In the Arctic oceanic areas, evaporation is greater than precipitation. As a result, the salt concentration of arctic sea water is very high. This, combined with it cooling, makes it sink, follow the sea bottom south, and create an excess of water in the Southern Hemisphere. This excess water flows back as less salty and warmer surface water, for example in the Gulf Stream along the west coast of Europe.
A general warming of sea water, by itself, would mean that the water would not be able to absorb as much carbon dioxide as before. Warm water can hold less carbon dioxide than cold.
The sea off East Greenland dominates life on land. But the sea is not a passive sparring partner. This is the basis for a study in Young Sound that is trying to uncover the parameters for and quantify the circulation of carbon from carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, through the biological systems, to sediment on the seabed. What is the scale of this movement of carbon?
But there are many intermediate calculations. As the ice melts, more and more light enters the sea. This increases primary production, i.e. algae grow and reproduce. This in turn means more food for the next link in the arctic food chain, etc. While algae in the open seas and seaweed on the seabed increase, living conditions for the ice algae that live in and on the sea ice degenerate. These are examples of conflicting changes in the marine environment. It is not yet possible to see what the final result will be for, for example, higher mammals in the Arctic like walruses, seals, and polar bears.
The projects in Daneborg started at the same time as the establishment of the station in Zackenberg. They were independent stations in the beginning, and are now being combined.
The financing is put together by the Ministry of Information Technology and Research through the Danish Polar Center, the Ministry of Environment and Energy (Dancea funds), the Institute of Geography at the University of Copenhagen and the Home Rule Government of Greenland.
The snows of Zackenberg
With respect to the musk oxen, luck has it that people from Sirius and from the weather station have been recording observations of them for forty years. They have done it very well. That means that it has been possible to process the data and see what has happened to these musk ox populations over the last forty years. In all of central northeast Greenland - from Zackenberg up to Lambert Land, the musk ox population collapsed in the early eighties in connection with the fall ice formation. So there are relatively few animals, especially in the coastal areas, where there was most ice formation.
Another core area is Jameson Land, directly west of the town of Scoresbysund, where about 300 are killed each year, which is what they calculate the population can tolerate.
In Zackenberg, they are looking closely at what winter conditions mean for the survival of a generation of calves in the first year of their lives. There is a population of about 250 to 300 animals in a relatively limited area, called Wollaston Forland and A.P. Olsen Land. Of these, 160 musk oxen are in the Zackenberg Valley itself, an important autumn feeding area for them. A lot is known about their age distribution, sex distribution, the yearly survival rate of the different generations, and of the animals' use of different areas. Among other things, the vegetation mass and the different types of vegetation are measured with satellite pictures and hand held instruments.
And so we come back to the snow and the long time series. Could they not just use satellite pictures? In principal, yes. The problem with satellite pictures is that just a fog pocket over the area the day the satellite passes would mean no picture. Besides, a satellite picture is confoundedly expensive. That is why there is a digital camera on the top of Zackenberg Mountain. With this snow camera, which is powered by a solar panel, pictures can be taken every day, even on overcast days - a service to the researchers, which makes Zackenberg something very special.
But the many other factors that influence the interaction of ecosystems must be studied one at a time.
