The Fate of Greenland Lessons from Abrupt Climate Change

Viewed from above, Greenland offers an endless vista of whiteness interrupted only byscattered ponds of azure-colored melt water. Ninety percent of Greenland is covered by ice; its icesheet, the largest outside Antarctica, stretches almost 1,000 miles from north to south and 600miles from east to west. But this stark view of ice and snow is changing -- and changing rapidly.Greenland's ice sheet is melting; the dazzling, photogenic display of icebergs breaking offGreenland's rapidly melting glaciers has become a tourist attraction. The Fate ofGreenland documents Greenland's warming with dramatic color photographs and investigatesepisodes in Greenland's climate history for clues about what happens when climate change is abruptrather than gradual.

Greenland's climate past and present could presage ourclimate future. Abrupt climate change would be cataclysmic: the melting of Greenland's ice shelfwould cause sea levels to rise twenty-four feet worldwide; lower Manhattan would be underwater andFlorida's coastline would recede to Orlando. The planet appears to be in a period of acute climateinstability, exacerbated by carbon dioxide we pour into the atmosphere. As this book makes clear, itis in all of our interests to pay attention to Greenland.

Wallace Broecker, an oceanographer, is Newberry Professor of Geology at Columbia University and a winner of the Crafoord Prize in Geosciences.