Greenland, desert and independence

Yesterday was an interesting day with some work to be done getting instructions, how to operate some of the measurement systems at Summit, but also having some time for sightseeing. We went with some UK colleagues on a bike-trip to one of the many lakes around here and which also provided a beautiful view over the long fjord here as you can see at the picture. However with all this water and the current warm temperatures here makes the mosquito's being a real nuisance. If you move your are ok but just stopping to watch some locals playing a football match against the local police squad results in a cloud of mosquito's around you in a minute. That makes the difference with the Nevada desert landscape; somehow this landscape and the village reminds me so much of travelling through Nevada with sparse vegetation, lots of dust and "ghost-town" like villages.

I had an interesting discussion with a Danish colleague, Lars, who is here to organize ice core measurements at a site north of Summit. They are currently 400m deep and still have to go another 2km which will take them another ~ 2years. The discussion started on an issue how the chemistry (that we measure at Summit) is also an issue for the interpretation of the composition of the ice cores, in particular that of methane. This is something that I still like to know more about so if somebody happens to have information on this, I would be keen to hear it. The discussion continued on the topic of the link between Greenland and Danmark where there appears to be a lot of debate on the future. Should Greenland become independent or linked to Danmark? It seems to be a very complicated issue including the fact that you could ask if Greenland could actually be independent being so dependent on the support from Danmark with respect to infrastructure. They are considering to establish a large aluminum mine on the east coast but for that they need to bring in a lot of foreign workers to get the work done. There is also many cultural issues reflected by discussions on the main language of the country, Greenlandic (?) or Danish. They apparently changed it to Greenlandic some time ago but then they have a hard time to find qualified teachers. We discussed more but it became apparent that there is still a long and unclear way to go,

Laurens