Ilulissat, Greenland - German Chancellor Angela Merkel gained a first-hand impression of the effects of global warming on the polar ice cap during a helicopter flight over the west of Greenland Friday. Scientists based on Greenland, the world's largest island and an autonomous territory under the Danish crown, showed the chancellor the effects of climate change.
Following a sea-trip along Greenland's western coast Thursday, Merkel called for greater international efforts to combat climate change.
"I believe that decisive years lie ahead for us in fighting climate change," she said, pledging that Germany would press the issue during the final months of its year-long G8 presidency.
Earlier the chancellor, accompanied by German Environment Minister Sigmar Gabriel, saw how ice was breaking off the Ilulissat glacier into the Icefjord.
She also defended her trip, which came in for criticism from opposition parties which accused the chancellor of engaging in pointless symbolism.
"We must make visible what is happening to our natural environment," she said.
The trip was at the invitation of Danish Prime Minister Fogh Rasmussen.
Merkel said she would use the G8 presidency to press for contact between the industrialized nations and large developing countries like China and India to counter climate change ahead of a meeting of environment ministers under UN auspices in Bali in December.
The chancellor, who is a physicist by training, is to address the UN general assembly for the first time on September 25, combining this with an international conference on climate change in New York called by US President George W Bush.
