The Greenland ice sheet is five kilometres thick and melting fast. The effect of adding all that water to the oceans may become terrifyingly apparent around the world in the coming decades, but the effects of climate warming are already clear in the Arctic itself. Here's the evidence, in words and pictures by Alun Anderson, former editor-in-chief of New Scientist and author of After the Ice: Life, death and politics in the new Arctic (published this month by HarperCollins-Smithsonian in the US and Virgin Books in the UK).

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