Yearbook 2010
Greenland. The research reports on the melting Greenland ice sheet were numerous during the year. An American study in February showed that increasingly warmer seawater eats into the ice beneath the surface of the water and bursts from the Greenland ice cover.
According to COUNTRYAAH, Greenland has a population of 56,025 (2018). However, according to another study, the ice in the polar regions melts only half as fast as previously thought. This would be because researchers forgot to take into account the land rise, which resulted in the size of the ice sheets and thus the melting being calculated incorrectly. According to the new calculations, Greenland loses more than 100 billion tonnes of ice a year instead of the previously estimated 230 billion tonnes.
During the year, a huge island of ice, 260 square kilometers large and 200 meters thick, was reported to have broken out of the Petermann glacier in Greenland. The huge block of ice was reported to be the largest in close to half a century that has come off the archaic ice.
This year’s record-breaking summer, according to climate scientists, meant that 540 cubic kilometers of ice disappeared from Greenland. It should have been 25 to 50 percent more than normal and the largest ice melt since the temperature in Greenland began to be measured in 1873.
In June, it was reported that more than 40 percent of Kuummiut residents had tuberculosis bacteria. According to a previous Danish survey, every tenth child in Greenland carries the bacterium, in southern Greenland every fifth.
After a quarter-century ban, Greenland was given the right to hunt humpback whales again during the year. After threatening to retire from the International Whaling Commission (IWC), Greenland’s Inuit as indigenous people were exempted.
- Abbreviation Finder: Check to see how the two letter abbreviation of GL stands for the country of Greenland in geography.
In August, indications of oil discoveries off the west coast of Greenland were reported, raising expectations for a Greenland oil boom. At the same time, the BP oil company announced that it was giving up attempts to drill for oil in the Arctic. The Greenland government did not grant BP a license in Greenland following the company’s oil disaster in the Gulf of Mexico. Greenpeace activists, who temporarily managed to occupy a drilling rig west of Greenland, said an accident similar to that in the Gulf of Mexico would have even worse consequences in the Arctic climate and in an area with a lack of infrastructure.
In October, Jonathan Motzfeldt, who was named Greenland’s father, passed away. He turned 72. Motzfeldt led Greenland to self-government from Denmark in 1979 and became the first Greenlandic head of government.
Greenland – Nuuk
Nuuk
Nuuk, Danish Godthåb, capital and largest city in Greenland; 16,181 residents (2012). Nuuk is located at Davis Strait on Greenland’s southwestern coast, on a promontory between the mouths of two elongated fjords, and consists of an older district, Kolonihaven, with buildings from the 18th and 19th centuries, and a newly built, with a. large high-rise buildings. Business mainly comprises the food industry (seafood) and growing tourism. The city has a ferry port, which is open all year round, and airport. Nuuk was built by Hans Egede as a mission and trading station in 1728 in a countryside with several memories from the colonization of the Northmen during the Middle Ages. Even in 1950, the population was only a thousand, but the city has since grown rapidly, which among other things. has caused numerous social problems.