Grise Fiord (Sep 29/03) - The high Arctic, where Larry Audlaluk lives, had forests long ago.

Fossilized forests in the high Arctic prove it, offering up remnants of trees that look like coal.

News that the Ward Hunt ice shelf off the North end of Ellesmere Island is breaking up doesn't surprise Audlaluk.

"Maybe it's just the forest trying to come back," said Audlaluk last week. "To the way it used to be."

It is also a confirmation of what elders have been saying for many years.

"Global warming is really a reality," he said. "It is really here."

Audlaluk doesn't need researchers to tell him about changes he has witnessed in his own community.

"I have seen glaciers become almost non-existent in some of Grise Fiord's valleys," he said.

At a conference with elders a few years ago, Audlaluk heard other tales of dramatic change.

"Some of them were quite disturbed," he said.

"People making aged food, like walrus, it's dangerous now because it's too warm in summer. Communities were saying they are having long summers. Ice hardly forms until into December."

Change is not limited to the Canadian Arctic.

In Greenland, Audlaluk's friends lament traditional ice trails that now have so many cracks "they have to re-route them," he said.

"What we have been seeing for the last 10 years," he said, "now people are finally starting to notice."

Marty Kuluguqtuq at the hamlet office in Grise Fiord heard the ice break-up is big news for southern researchers, but it's not the talk of the town in Canada's northernmost community.

"What I've heard is probably what you heard on the national news," he said.

Broken Ice

• The Ward Hunt Ice Shelf formed 3,000 years ago and was the largest in the Arctic.
• It was about 30 metres thick, 10-times thicker than sea ice covering the Arctic Ocean.
• The shelf, a cap at the end of Disraeli Fjord, split in half, allowing a freshwater lake behind it to drain away.
• The shelf was floating ice attached to land and was a piece of a larger ice shelf that once ran the length of Ellesmere Island.
• Breakup of the shelf began about 100 years ago and by 1982, only 10 per cent remained.