© Jeff Shea/The New York Times
A penisula long thought to be part of Greenland's mainland turned out to be an island when a glacier retreated. Credit
A penisula long thought to be part of Greenland's mainland turned out to be an island when a glacier retreated. Credit
When it had disappeared over the horizon, no sound remained but the howling of the Arctic wind.
"It feels a little like the days of the old explorers, doesn't it?" Dennis Schmitt said.
Mr. Schmitt, a 60-year-old explorer from Berkeley, Calif., had just landed on a newly revealed island 400 miles north of the Arctic Circle in eastern Greenland. It was a moment of triumph: he had discovered the island on an ocean voyage in September 2005. Now, a year later, he and a small expedition team had returned to spend a week climbing peaks, crossing treacherous glaciers and documenting animal and plant life.
Despite its remote location, the island would almost certainly have been discovered, named and mapped almost a century ago when explorers like Jean-Baptiste Charcot and Philippe, Duke of Orléans, charted these coastlines. It would have been discovered had it not been bound to the coast by glacial ice.
Comment: See Laura Knight-Jadczyk's editorial Fire and Ice: The Day After Tomorrow for the details on how "global warming" will result in dramatic global cooling