ON BOARD A NASA PLANE ABOVE GREENLAND (Denmark) (AFP)

On board an old cuckoo skirting the white desert of East Greenland, three scientists from Nasa drop probes into the pearly waters of the Arctic to measure the impact of the oceans on melting ice.

Joshua Willis is head of the Oceans Melting Greenland Mission (OMG), which has been conducting DC3 rotations since 2015 in the Danish climate-stricken homeland.

In his blue astronaut suit, this oceanographer whose generous favorites accentuate his physical resemblance to Elvis Presley is in action this August day when AFP journalists are invited to accompany him in the polar sky.

It loads into a drop pit a probe, a cylinder a meter long and about ten centimeters in diameter, filled with sensors. At the radio signal of the pilot, he precipitates the probe in the vacuum.

The warhead fuse towards the Earth, swirls, sinks on the bluish surface, sinks into the waters covered with foam and sunshine. On the coast line, as far as the eye can see, the glaciers in danger, eroded by the air and the waves, collapse, disintegrate, freeing in a deafening crash blocks of ice like islands of drifting sugar.

"The level of the oceans could probably rise several meters over the next hundred years, it is a huge threat for hundreds of millions of people around the world," said Joshua Willis.

- Oceans eat ice -

Once submerged, the sensor sends real-time information about the temperature and salinity of the ocean, translated into multicolored diagrams on the screens of scientists in their flying lab.

"A lot of people think that the ice is melting because of the warming of the air, a little like an ice cube under a hair dryer, but in fact the oceans are also eating away at the ice," recalls the US researcher.

Over a five-year period, the OMG team compares the data collected during the winter with those collected over the summer. Objective: to refine predictions of sea level rise.

Greenland, an island of two million square kilometers (nearly four times the size of France), three-quarters of which is covered by the waters of the Arctic Ocean, is 85% covered with ice.

This huge territory is on the front line of melting Arctic ice, a region that is warming twice as fast as the rest of the planet. If the pack ice and the ice that covers the continental shelf were to disappear, the sea level could rise by seven meters and submerge islands and coastal regions on both sides of the planet.

NASA has been interested in these phenomena since the 1970s after the drastic reduction of its budgets for space exploration. Today, it uses more than a dozen satellites to observe the Earth.

Ian McCubbin, one of OMG's scientists, is releasing Joshua Willis to the drop. He is also in charge of logistics for these missions from the small Kulusuk airport, an island community of less than 300 souls in southeastern Greenland.

"The geographical remoteness of Greenland is a singular challenge," said McCubbin, a baseball cap screwed on his head, while his colleague Ian Fenty decrypts the information sent by the probe.

"These data are invaluable because they allow us for the first time to quantitatively correlate changes in ocean temperatures with melting ice," he says.

- The worst consequences -

Cast iron opens up the major northern routes to maritime traffic, connecting the Pacific to the Atlantic and sharpening the economic and geostrategic appetites of the great powers, led by the United States, China and Russia. Knowing the issues, US President Donald Trump has proposed to Denmark to buy Greenland, without success, causing a mini-diplomatic crisis with his ally NATO.

After two hours of flight, the DC3 heads for Kulusuk. Through the portholes, we can see here and there a procession of cetaceans slicing the silver immensity between bunches of icebergs sparse.

On the ground, in the only hotel of the village, Joshua Willis grime for the good cause. In front of an amused audience of locals, scientists and journalists, leather jacket on the shoulders, collar raised, glasses smoked, it is Elvis in the country of the polar bears. We recognize the notes of a success of the King, whose lyrics are diverted into "Climate Rock".

"As a climate specialist, my responsibility is to explain to the general public what we observe," he says. "We have tough decisions to make if we want to avoid the worst consequences of climate change."

© 2019 AFP