Copenhagen correspondent Gelu Sulugiuc and Reuters photographer Bob Strong are in Greenland to visit a team of scientists studying the melting of the ice sheet.

ILULISSAT, Greenland – Sitting on the rocks atop Greenland’s Suicide Cliff, from where old Inuit women used to hurl themselves into the icy waters below when they became a burden to their community, I hear a crack and a thud in the distance. Could it be thunder?

We dont have thunder here. But I know it from movies, says Vilhelmina Nathanielsen, who hiked with us through melting snow, past the little thats left of the old settlement of Sermermiut to get here, at the mouth of the Ilulissat fjord. Its the ice cracking inside the icebergs. If were lucky we might see one break apart, she says.

Were not that lucky. One can see icebergs lose big chunks every day here in the summer, but now its too early. They crowd the mouth of the fjord, waiting for the high tide or to melt just enough so they can float over the sediment that reduces the water depth there to only about 250-300 metres.

Its an iceberg traffic jam. They all come from the Sermeq Kujalleq glacier, which once filled the entire length of the fjord but which has retreated more than 40 kilometres, its fate similar to that of other glaciers facing warmer temperatures in Greenland and around the world.

It takes an iceberg a year to navigate the length of the fjord and then almost another year to hop over the exit. After that its smooth sailing northwest towards Canada, then south to Newfoundland, before spreading out over the North Atlantic and eventually melting.

In all likelihood, the iceberg that sank the Titanic hailed from here. Todays icebergs, though certainly still imposing, may find it harder to perform a similar feat.

Ten years ago we had icebergs as high as 120 metres above the water, says Edvard Samuelson Magnusson, a local fisherman and boat tour captain. Right now the biggest we can see is 80 to 100 metres. The water got warmer in Disko Bay. Ten years ago we used to drive dog sleds on the ice across the bay in the winter, but not anymore.

The light breeze coming in from across the bay still seems pretty cold to me as I contemplate the slow-moving behemoths, but, as climate scientists like to say, its not one measurement that counts, but the trend.

Fishing boat passes an iceberg near Ilulissat. Photo by Bob Strong, Reuters.