雪橇狗不是在水上行走，而是像鱼一样前进

Each year in June, just before all the sea ice has melted, climate scientists at the Danish Meteorological Institute head out by dog sled onto the Greenland sea ice to collect their instruments. Typically the dogs walk on ice, but because of warming temperatures, this year the dogs were splashing in ankle-deep water.

每年6月，就在所有的海冰融化之前，丹麦气象研究所的气候科学家们驾着狗拉的雪橇来到格陵兰海冰上收集仪器。通常情况下，狗会在冰上行走，但由于气温变暖，今年狗狗们在齐踝深的水中戏水。

Photo: Steffen M. Olsen/Twitter

The photo above was taken on June 13 by climatologist Steffen Olsen from the Center for Ocean and Ice at the institute. Olsen's colleague, Rasmus Tonboe, tweeted the image, saying "rapid melt and sea ice with low permeability and few cracks leaves the melt water on top."

上面这张照片是6月13日由该研究所海洋与冰中心的气候学家斯蒂芬·奥尔森拍摄的。奥尔森的同事拉斯穆斯·汤博在推特上发布了这张照片，称“冰层迅速融化，渗透性低，裂缝很少，融化的水就在上面。”

Olsen said the ice was about 1.2 meters (3.9 feet) thick. It was taken in the middle of Inglefield Bredning, a fjord in northwestern Greenland. He tweeted that the dogs weren't running on the ice sheet, but on sea ice flooded by surface meltwater.

奥尔森说，冰层大约有1.2米(3.9英尺)厚。照片拍摄于格陵兰岛西北部的英格菲尔德布雷宁峡湾中部。他在推特上说，这些狗不是在冰盖上奔跑，而是在被表面融水淹没的海冰上奔跑。

"This year the expedition to retrieve the instruments – by dog-sled, still the most practical way to get around in this region at this time of year – ran into a lot of standing water on the sea ice," Ruth Mottram, climate scientist at the institute, told The Guardian. "The ice here forms pretty reliably every winter and is very thick, which means that there are relatively few fractures for meltwater to drain through. Last week saw the onset of very warm conditions in Greenland and in fact much of the rest of the Arctic, driven by warmer air moving up from the south."

该研究所的气候科学家露丝·莫特拉姆告诉《卫报》说:“今年，用狗拉雪橇来取回这些仪器的探险队在海冰上遇到了很多死水。狗拉雪橇仍然是每年这个时候在这一地区旅行最实用的方式。这里的冰每年冬天都会形成，而且非常厚，这意味着融水相对来说很少有裂缝流出来。上周，格陵兰岛和北极其他大部分地区开始出现非常温暖的天气，这是受南部暖空气上升的影响。”

Those conditions led to a lot of melting ice, she said. Because the ice is thick in the area and there are no fractures where it can drain, the water pools on the surface. Events like this aren't unusual, but they typically don't occur until later in the summer.

她说，这些条件导致大量的冰融化。因为该地区的冰很厚，没有裂缝可以排水，所以水面上形成了水池。像这样的事件并不罕见，但通常要到夏天晚些时候才会发生。

Mottram told The Guardian that the temperatures are out of the ordinary but it's too early to say whether global warming has played a part because it's "still a weather-driven extreme event, so it's hard to pin it down to climate change alone."

莫特拉姆在接受《卫报》采访时表示，虽然气温异常，但现在就说全球变暖是否起到了一定作用还为时过早，因为它“仍然是一个由天气驱动的极端事件，因此很难将其单独归咎于气候变化”。

However, she said: "Our climate model simulations expect there to be a general decline in the length of the sea ice season around Greenland, [but] how fast and how much is very much dependent on how much global temperature rises."

然而，她表示:“我们的气候模型预计，格陵兰岛周围海冰季节的长度将普遍下降，但下降的速度和幅度在很大程度上取决于全球气温上升的幅度。”