Greenland is a major place for climate research.Credit: Lukas Larsson Warzycha/Getty
Following US military action to remove Nicolas Maduro, Venezuela’s president, on January 3, US President Donald Trump repeated his claim that he wants to acquire Greenland using a “range of options”, including using the military, the White House said.
In response, a group of scientists co-authored a “Statement from American Scientists in Solidarity with Greenland,” which is open to any U.S.-based researchers who have conducted research on the island. message, Published on January 9So far, it has collected 204 signatures.
Greenland has long been a focal point for researchers in fields ranging from glaciology to evolution. Temperatures in the Arctic have risen several times faster than the rest of the planet, and research in Greenland has been crucial to such climate science studies.1.
nature He spoke with Yarrow Oxford, a paleoimmunology researcher and science communicator based in Lexington, Massachusetts. Ackford runs a research group at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, and is one of the creators of this initiative. Her research helped reconstruct the climate of the past by studying lake sediments on the island2.
What is the importance of Greenland? Can it be described as the canary in the coal mine for climate change?
The Greenland ice sheet is a crucial example of climate change. It has changed very rapidly in the last two decades. The impacts are both local and global due to effects on sea levels, and perhaps ocean currents as well. So, the region is sensitive to climate change but it’s also part of the climate system that affects the entire world in a really profound way.
There is a great deal of scientific interest in Greenland, which is shown by the fact that many researchers are willing to sign this statement. We limited signatories to US-based scientists or US scientists living abroad who work or study in Greenland, which reflects the number of US scientists conducting research in Greenland.
What prompted this message?
Many people in the United States — not just scientists — are deeply upset by the rhetoric directed toward Greenland. But the scientists who work there feel it very personally. Many of us have Greenlandic friends, colleagues and collaborators there. It is a special place for us and we have benefited from the generosity of the local communities there. You really motivated us to achieve two main goals with this message. First, we want to let our colleagues and friends in Greenland know that we are thinking of them now, and that we stand with them.
Trump’s offer to buy Greenland threatens to destabilize Arctic research
Second, we want to encourage our colleagues here in the United States to express their opinions – by sending letters to the editors of their local newspapers, or by sharing this message with senators and representatives in Washington, D.C.