THE ARCTIC IS CHANGING COLOUR

Tobias Carter launched the Unu Mondo project to document climate change in the Arctic. His article was runner-up for the 2022 Brian Black Memorial Award

- Tobias Carter

The north face of our planet is literally changing colour. As the Arctic Ocean loses sea ice, it turns large areas from white to dark blue. At the same time, the land loses snow coverage for longer and longer periods every summer, going from snowy white to brown then greens, with the tree line creeping further north every year.

Maybe with recent heatwaves, melting airport runways and buckling railways, climate change is starting to catch up with a few of us, but it is still viewed by many as a distant and uncertain threat.

The Arctic is warming three times faster than the global average. This is what made me sail there in the summer of 2020, despite an ongoing global pandemic. The climate would not wait, nor would I or my newfound crew.

The plan was simple: sail to Greenland to gather testimonies on climate change from scientists and local communities. We would also act as a logistical platform for research projects while filming and interviewing with our onboard media crew.

There were, however, many issues with this plan. I had first launched this project, Unu Mondo, with Sophie Simonin in June 2019. Together we had no money, under a year to prepare, a Swanson 36 in bad nick and no high-latitude sailing experience. I was the more experienced sailor of the two and had only been sailing for three years!

To top it off, four months before our planned departure, we purchased a 47-footer on the dry with a cracked hull and recruited four crew (media and scientists) of which three had virtually no sea experience whatsoever.

GREENLAND HERE WE COME!