'The Land That Never Melts' Is No More

April 3, 2007 — -- Elizabeth Andre is a member of the Global Warming 101 expedition currently on a four-month trip around the most remote, inhabited regions of the Arctic. This expedition to investigate the impact of global warming has been hampered by the very conditions it set out to document. This is an update on the trip as told to ABC NEWS.com.

Days after our small team crossed an Arctic ice field, the surface broke up and disappeared. If we had set out hours earlier, team members may not have survived.

Canadian radio is reporting that the ice fields here are so thin that seal pups are falling through to their deaths. According to a CBC radio report, the area around Cumberland Sound is experiencing the worst ice conditions in recorded history, and we fear for our safety. This remote Inuit region is the frontline of Earth's changing climate.

Led by renown explorer Will Steger, our group has joined four Inuit hunters on a 1,200-mile, four-month-long dog-sled expedition across the Canadian Arctic's Baffin Island.

We are traveling with four Inuit dog teams over traditional hunting paths, up frozen rivers, through steep-sided fiords, over glaciers and ice caps and across the sea ice to reach some of the most remote Inuit villages in the world.

The team arrived in Pangnirtung March 10 after skirting around the edge of the Cumberland Sound. The base camp team was relieved to see the others mushing down the Pangnirtung fiord, after hearing the reports of thin ice and large stretches of open water on the sound.

The base camp team had flown to Iqaluit a few days before the dog teams arrived. On the plane, team member Elizabeth Andre sat next to Inuit elder Jamesie Mike. Jamesie lives in Pangnirtung but had traveled to Iqaluit for an elders meeting on climate change. Although Jamesie speaks only the native language here, Inuktitut, he can still communicate to Elizabeth about the ice conditions on Cumberland Sound.

Jamesie had the window seat on the side of the plane facing toward the head of the sound around which the dog teams were traveling. He tapped Elizabeth on the shoulder, with wide eyes fixed toward the window.

The view was frightening, since the ice on Cumberland Sound was fragmented with large stretches of completely open water. The northwest wind had blown the pack ice out toward the mouth of the sound, leaving miles and miles of open water near its head, right where the dog teams were traveling. The only solid ice skirted the very edges of the sound, and even this was punctuated by occasional polynias (ice-free areas of warm upwelling ocean currents).