The smoke from the megafires ravaging Canada darkened the Greenlandic sky at the start of the week, residents of the west of the immense Arctic island testified.
“It was a bit of an apocalyptic atmosphere, with a cloud of smoke and a smell of smoke,” researcher Caroline Bouchard, who has lived in Nuuk, the capital of the autonomous Danish territory for seven years, told AFP on Wednesday.
“On Monday it seemed like the sun hadn’t come up, but the next day it was gone,” she added.
Images posted on social networks show a low sky, covered in thick fog.
Contacted by worried residents, the police estimated on Facebook that “the wind (had) sent smoke from North American forest fires over Greenland”.
According to Mme Bouchard, this is the first time that smoke has spread like this in Greenland since the start of the Canadian forest fires.
“During the summer, we were able to have a beautiful red sunset because of the smoke particles, but there was no smell or black clouds,” she said.
In June, low concentrations of smoke particles from fires in Canada were measured in southern Norway.
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