END TIMES WEATHER:The locals are feeling the warming in their bones

KANGERLUSSUAQ,Greenland-If the sea surface rises and floods the Netherlands, scientists say the water will probably come from Greenland's ice dome. This is why Janekke Ettema, a scientist from Utrecht University in The Netherlands, came all the way to Kangerlussuaq. She's here to study the dome. "After two years behind a desk, building models of the changing sea surface following the dome's melting, it feels different to be out in the field, seeing and feeling the dome," she said. From afar, the ice dome looks like a frozen wave. It envelops brown hills and black cliffs in white and rises some 100 meters above the sandy soil. A stormy river of melted ice water flows at its feet. Every now and then, a piece of the wall at the edge of the dome breaks off and falls into the river with a deafening crack. A few years ago, four Swedish hikers were killed here when a piece of the glacier wall broke away and crushed them. We are near a glacier in Kangerlussuaq, in western Greenland. Over the weekend, an entire lake at the foot of the ice dome - three kilometers in diameter and 100 meters deep - flowed west into the sea and disappeared in a few hours, after a glacier serving as a dam collapsed. This kind of thing happens once in decades. It was a miracle no one was killed, a local man said. This confirms what scientists have understood in recent years; that Greenland's icecap is responding to climate change and being altered faster than previously thought. Vilades Petersen, 73, who lives in a residential home for seniors in the little town of Ilulissat. "We were seven brothers and sisters. We had no electricity and smeared seal fat on a stone and lit it for light. The smell didn't offend us; today it might," Petersen said. "It was much colder in winter then. We had a coal oven, but we didn't always have coal to burn in it. The girls used to play with a whale fin, dressing it up in sealskin clothes like a doll." When Petersen was 16 he began to hunt, with a spear. "When I was 18, I received my first kayak and went hunting with it. I caught a lot of seals and birds. My family was happy. As a hunter, you learn to follow the regular routes of the seals and birds." When Petersen was young, the sea started freezing in late August and the water level was much lower. "When I was a boy the tiny island off Ilulissat was much bigger," Petersen said. "You could have put a whole flock of seals on it. The weather has changed completely. Once it was fixed. Now it keeps changing. I can feel it in my bones."
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As in the days of Noah...