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Af Af redaktionen 12-02 2008 - 21:01

Minus 30 degrees Celsius. That's how cold it's been in large parts of western Greenland where the population has been bundling up in hats and scarves. At the same time, Denmark's Meteorological Institute states that the ice between Canada and southwest Greenland right now has reached its greatest extent in 15 years.

'Satellite pictures show that the ice expansion has extended farther south this year. In fact, it's a bit past the Nuuk area. We have to go back 15 years to find ice expansion so far south. On the eastern coast it hasn't been colder than normal, but there has been a good amount of snow.'

But how do these new reports fit in with continual reports that ice in the Arctic Ocean has been melting at a record rate due to increasing temperatures? And isn't global warming at the top of the political agenda these years?

Shifting weather

If it's up to meteorologists from Denmark's Meteorological Institute, there is not anything inherently contradictory that extreme cold is replaced by higher temperatures than average. Or that melting sea ice occasionally is replaced by expanding ice sheets.

'Weather is a phenomenon which changes from year to year and right now the atmosphere has changed so we have cold weather. That will certainly mean that melting ice in the North Pole will be less this year, but next year the situation can look completely different,' according to Henriksen.

To sum things up, global warming hasn't been called off. In the meanwhile, western Greenlanders will have to accept that the cold weather continues for some time. At least until next Tuesday when milder weather could be on the way, according to Polarfronten online.