Washington — Greenland’s ice cap holds beneath it 10% of the earth’s freshwater, enough to raise global sea levels by 6m. While there’s no doubt it is melting, scientists have little certainty about exactly what’s happening inside this 10,000-year-old ice roughly one-and-a-half times the size of SA. Last winter was the warmest on record in the Arctic, and as Greenland heats up, understanding this glaciate activity has become essential to navigating our future. That’s why scientists need narwhals — whales with 2.75m long, unicorn-like tusks — which are some of the only mammals benefiting from all that melting ice. "The narwhals like it," says Josh Willis, the project lead for Nasa’s Oceans Melting Greenland (OMG) campaign. When melting ice falls into the sea, it churns up the water, bringing food such as plankton and krill to the surface. The whales tend to feed at the bottom of melting glaciers and can dive to depths of 1,800m, precisely the areas that OMG needs to survey. It’s a pe...
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