Kerry Koepping, the founding director of the nonprofit Arctic Arts Project, teamed with visual artists and scientists to provide visual evidence of the latest findings on climate change in Greenland — and build capacity for public engagement.

“Change is pervasive, kinetic and profound something new? Environmentally speaking, climate change appears as a rapid course of kinetic evolution. As the human existence is wrapped in questions both profound and complex regarding this change, one question that surfaces for me as an artist is: What does profound kinetic evolution look like? What is the visual response to these changes in our environment?”

As spring is coming earlier in West Greenland, the warm weather impacts the meltwater coming off the ice sheet that covers much of Greenland. The photograph below was taken during a flight over the western side of the ice sheet, vividly showing huge amounts of blue amist the expanse of white. The albedo effect (which refers to the reflectivity of a surface) changes dramatically when a surface is no longer white. More of the sun’s energy is absorbed by darker surfaces.

The Vatnajokull “Crystal Cave” pictured above, as seen in February of 2015, has retreated more than 100 meters in only one year. Most glacier caves are started by water running through or under the glacier. Sediment in this cave has been documented at 1300 years old. 
As anticipated, this cave does not exist as it did in the winter of 2015. As of February 2016 the glacier has now retreated more than 120 meters, year after year.

In the next few months, the Arctic Arts Project will be presenting a visual record of the impacts of climate change -and technology- on the Thule Inuit population of East Greenland, including the shift in fish and whale populations. Follow the Artic Arts Project to continue learning about the environmental and social impact of climate change in the Artic and the rest of the planet…