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AUSUITTUQ/GRISE FIORD -Students at Grise Fiord's Ummimak School heard some unpleasant facts May 19, with the visit of a southern scientist studying the glaciers of the High Arctic.

Dave Burgess, from Natural Resources Canada, told students the glacier that is the community's playground is shrinking fast, losing more than a metre of ice per year at one end. On top of the glacier the decline is less, about 10 cm lost per year.

"When he mentioned that the ice is melting and the temperature is getting warmer every year, the glacier is starting to get small, that's when I started to get scared and I had to speak up," said Grade 10 student Daniel Flaherty.

Burgess's visit to the school was part of an outreach by glacier scientists to the communities near where their work is based.

"It's piquing their (students') interest that it's measuring something they are interested in," said Burgess. "If we keep coming back they can become very educated on this component of their backyard."

Flaherty, a lifelong resident of Grise Fiord, is one of many in the community who enjoys riding his snow machine across the frozen hills of the glacier. At 75 square kilometres, the Grise Fiord glacier has been losing what used to be permanent ice every year.

"I asked him how many per cent of the ice has melted since global warming got so high and the percentage was about 60-70 per cent," Flaherty recalled.

Burgess said the scientific research agreed with what he heard from the community itself.

"They've seen the changes," he said.

Grise Fiord mayor Meeka Kiguktak agreed with Burgess's assessment.

"Everywhere, all over Ellesmere and Devon Island all the glaciers are melting so fast," she said. "When we were on Devon Island last summer, I've never seen the river go so fast. The river was going on top of the grass about two metres (up the bank). We could tell that it's really going this time way more than usual."

There is another nearby glacier which serves as the community's water supply. Burgess said satellite imagery showed the two used to be joined, but the southern arm where Ausuittummiut play has detached from the rest of the glacier as the ice receded.

Burgess was in town as part of a survey of some of the icecaps of the remote High Arctic: Melville, Meighen, Agassiz and Devon. He was taking readings of how much ice the glaciers gained or lost each year, a research project which has been collecting data since the early 1960s.

"In all cases there has been a mass loss since measurements began," Burgess said. "It accelerated a lot since the 1980s, especially smaller glaciers. Melville has been thinning and shrinking in area quite rapidly."

In 2007, Melville lost a metre of surface ice, a record since data collection began.

Glaciologists like Burgess work by putting posts in the ice of glaciers, each post marked with measurements along its length. Researchers visit these posts year after year and record what level the ice is. Compared with other years, that shows how the glacier's size has changed.

On-the-ground data collection is only part of how scientists watch the ice. There are also satellite images and aerial surveys such as a NASA fly-by over Grise Fiord's glacier in 2005.