KANGERLUSSUAQ, Greenland - The town that is the gateway to Greenland doesn’t look particularly inviting at first sight. Touching down in a plane filled with scientists, journalists, tourists and locals returning from Copenhagen, we are greeted by a barren, harsh and unforgiving landscape dotted with drab cinder block buildings tiny-windowed to keep out the deep winter freeze.

Luckily, nobody comes here for the town, but for what lies right outside. A short drive up a gravel road reveals a startling landscape of frozen lakes rimmed by hills on which woolly musk oxen graze and finally, 16 miles (26 kilometres) in the distance, the Greenland ice cap, which may hold the answer to how fast and how much the worlds oceans will rise due to climate change.

The Americans turned this former hunting outpost into an air force base in World War II and continued to use it through the Cold War until 1992, when they handed it over to Greenlands home rule government. Greenland, the worlds largest island if you dont count Australia, is an autonomous territory of Denmark. It has about 57,000 inhabitants, most of them Inuit, only about 550 of whom live in Kangerlussuaq.

The Americans are gone, but they left behind their buildings, which give the place its air of cold military efficiency. More importantly, they also left behind the airport. The locals brag that its the best airport in the world as far as the weather is concerned, at least. The wind never blows sideways on the runway and it rarely snows here, so the airport is open year-round, making Kangerlussuaq the ideal entry point to Greenland.

The town’s name means The Long Fjord, because it lies at the beginning of a 100-mile fjord that leads out to the islands west coast. A short hike up the rocky cliffs surrounding Kangerlussuaq offers a spectacular view of the fjord, choked here at its endpoint by sand blown in periodically off the ice cap.

We get more sand storms here than snow storms, says Kim Petersen, a local guide who runs Arctic Caving Adventures and takes thrill-seekers spelunking inside dangerous ice tunnels formed by water inside the ice sheet.

I hike with Petersen through shrubs and up a hill to try to sneak up on some musk oxen. We are lucky to get close enough to see five grazing peacefully, looking prehistoric with their curved horns and flowing wool. They get alarmed when they spot us and trot away. Spring is here now and with temperatures up to 15 degrees Celsius (59 Fahrenheit), it gets harder to find oxen close to the town. Their thick coats get too hot and they move toward the ice cap to seek relief.

And thats exactly where were going, too.

Scientists agree the earths climate is warming and most believe its very likely that much of the increase in temperature is a result of human activity. What still isn’t fully understood is the dynamics of the miles-high ice cap in Greenland, which has been melting faster. Scientists believe that if it melts completely, the world’s oceans would rise by about 7 meters, flooding London and New York City and drowning island nations like the Maldives.

So Reuters photographer Bob Strong and I are heading north to visit a team of scientists led by University of Colorados Dr. Koni Steffen, who has been studying the melting of the ice sheet for years at a research camp halfway between Greenlands western coast and the ice cap’s highest point.

Aerial view of a fjord in Greenland. Photo by Bob Strong, Reuters.