Coldest winter in many years

While almost 200 municipal officials from most of the cold world are gathered in the Greenlandic capital Nuuk to discuss the climate changes on the Winter Cities organizations biennal conference the worlds largest island faces the coldest winter in a decade.

On Disko Bay in western Greenland, where a number of prominent world leaders have visited in recent years to get a first-hand impression of climate change, temperatures have dropped so drastically that the water has frozen over for the first time in a decade.

Temperatures plunged to -25°C earlier this month, clogging the bay with ice and making shipping impossible for small crafts, tells Anthon Frederiksen, the mayor of the town of Ilulissat, where Disko Bay is located to the Danish newspaper Morgenavisen Jyllandsposten.

Frederiksen is happy about the ice conditions: "it's an advantage for fishermen who rely on dogsleds for transportation."

The mayor cautioned against thinking that the freezing temperature indicated that global warming claims were overblown. He noted that a nearby glacier had retracted more in the past two decades than in recorded history.

"We Greenlanders have acclimated to changing conditions over the past 1100 years," said Frederiksen. "Temperatures change at regular intervals."