Dr. William Colgan: Greenland Is a Poster Child of Climate Change

Melting ice sheets caused by climate change have left large stretches of Greenland’s coastline bare and introduced new environmental problems. Now, scientists are looking at ways to slow down the melt before it’s too late.

Dr. William Colgan is an Arctic researcher who has been conducting research on the ice sheets of Greenland for many years. He is a glaciologist, which is a geoscientist that obverses and studies the physical properties, movement, and history of ice sheets. His work in Greenland has been mainly composed of monitoring ice levels of remote ice sheets and observing the glacial processes.

Dr. Colgan describes his work as, “Some of it is monitoring where we just go to the same site year after year and take the same sort of measurements. And then some of it is more research, where instead of just monitoring something, you’re actually observing new processes that we didn’t realize were happening before.”

His website explains his research in more detail, such as simulations of ice-flow in Greenland and other Arctic regions, satellite observations, and instruments that collect smaller data that other methods of observation can’t detect. His main areas of interest in his research are the ice-bed interface and crevasse formation.

Melting Ice Sheets

The most recent focus of his work is on “assessing ice-sheet health, my current science projects involve looking for under-ice geothermal hot springs in Northeast Greenland and understanding why a mega-crevasse field has appeared in West Greenland in recent decades”.

Dr. Colgan’s work in recent years has been focused on the rapid melting of the ice sheets caused by climate change. He described Greenland and its ice sheet as “one of the poster children of climate change.” With ice melting as rapidly as over 8,000 metric tons per second in some areas of the ice sheet, climate change has had a deeply felt impact in the country. The rapid ice melt has also had major local and global impacts on sea levels. 

Describing the local impacts, Dr. Colgan explains that the ice sheet, “is melting more that then runs into the ocean. And the glaciers are sliding faster, and so you have more icebergs sliding into the ocean.” The melt from one ice-covered area in Greenland was “causing about 1% of global sea level rise all by itself”.

Reversing the Effects

The melting ice has resulted in other negative climate impacts, such as atmospheric and oceanic circulation, as well as on the regional climate. However, he believes it’s not too late to begin reversing the effects of climate change, but it will take an immense global effort. The change will require sustained climate-focused programs, as opposed to geotechnical, as he believes there are no “promising solutions” in that realm.

He outlines the actions necessary as “reduce[ing] atmospheric CO2 and stop[ing] that increase in long-wave radiation that’s baking the ice sheet year-round. That’s a big ask, but I think it’s the most feasible way to slow down the ice sheet melt”.

One of the areas that his research has focused on, which has some of the most visible impacts of climate change, is the Illulissat Glacier. This glacier is in the Western region of Greenland and is one of the world’s fastest and most active glaciers, according to the UNESCO World Heritage website. He describes the retreating ice margin on both sides of the glacier that’s falling into the ocean.

Colgan describes the ice margin as having retreated “In some spots up to five kilometers now,” and that the melting ice has left a “huge exposed fringe of recently deglaciated terrain around the ice sheet near Ilulissat.”

With strong global cooperation and effective climate change action, Dr. Colgan believes it’s not too late to meaningfully reverse the effects of climate change and slow down or stop the rapid ice melt that is happening in Greenland.

He elaborates that, “Well, as much as we can tell, we haven’t crossed the tipping point yet where it becomes irreversible.”

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This story is part of a semester-long investigative reporting project into Greenland’s people, history, and culture. It was created by an advanced reporting class in the Journalism, Advertising, and Media Studies program at UW-Milwaukee. Other stories from the project are available on Edge of the Arctic: Greenland, the Land of the People.

This work was made possible through the support of MPC Endowment Ltd., the philanthropic affiliate of the Milwaukee Press Club, and a private donor.