Think you know how to read? Think again if you're trying to read Danish. Here, a sneak peek at what the words look like, and what they actually sound like, as our friend Mark kindly reads to us from a children's book about animals.
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June 1 real-time temps. Commas are actually decimals. 32.8 degrees in Nuuk. Anna isn’t happy with her blogging stats, so she asked me to intervene with a guest post about my work to stimulate the viewers. I’m working at Asiaq which is housed under the Department of Infrastructure and Environment in the Greenland government. It’s kind of like a mini-version of the USGS, but Asiaq also does some private consulting related to hydropower projects in Greenland. I also recently learned that their current weather page is the second most popular site in Greenland! You will notice that daily highs here continue to hover just above freezing. Perfect weather. There is a lot of science happening in the arctic for a lot of reasons. Sea ice extent and thickness is diminishing, which is a big change for a society which depends on the ice to travel, hunt, and fish. The melting of the Greenland ice cap is one of the largest contributors to global sea level rise. These freshwater inputs affect marine ecosystems and the fishing industry. Permafrost is warming up which has implications for infrastructure and natural resource development. All of these processes intertwined in Greenland’s political environment (potential bid for independence from Denmark) make it an interesting problem in a modern, developing country. The commute to work--boat + skis. Thus far, “work” has involved a lot of skiing, which is always a good thing. A few times each week from May-October I travel 20 minutes by boat through Kobbefjord. Part of the program includes an eddy covariance system to monitor carbon dioxide exchange. Basically, air is pumped through tubing to an analyzer which determines the concentration of CO2. Another sensor calculates the wind speed/direction 20 times each second. The values are stored and processed on the computer, and with some math magic you can determine if humans are causing global warming. Or something like that. About to ski back to the boat. It’s a nice place to work, especially during good weather. Each day I’ve attempted to finish my field work in time to ski a legitimate run before the boat comes to pick me up... this can make for a long night at the office, but it's well worth it. I've only been successful twice, once with enough time to skin up about 800 meters (2500 feet) of perfect corn snow. For the ski back down to the ocean the entire valley and fjord were empty, except for my boat driver coming in to pick me up and some whales spouting in the distance. Not bad for a work day, especially in June. Of course, for each one of these days there will be ten days of driving, freezing rain. Field work in Greenland is not always glamorous.
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