'The Greenland Connection' from The Post and Courier

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The award-winning newspaper travels 3,000 miles to Greenland to discover how melting ice has an effect on the rising South Carolina coast.

The Post and Courier (Charleston, South Carolina) recently published a special report detailing how the melting ice in Greenland is effecting the South Carolina Lowcountry, from rising seas to heavier rains. Projects Reporter Tony Bartelme and Photojournalist Lauren Petracca traveled to Greenland to research and cover this story as a part of the newspaper's deep dive into climate issues facing the state.

Bartelme and Petracca worked with Josh Willis, a climate scientist with NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory and head of the Oceans Melting Greenland project. Willis has been researching the ocean's effect on the ice in Greenland for the past six years, and through this research has discovered that glaciers are even more threatened than once previously thought. Approximately 280 billion tons of the massive ice sheet in Greenland melts into the ocean every year and about 15% of Charleston’s rising sea level can be connected to this melting ice.

Bartelme, who also reported on The Post and Courier’s "Rising Waters," an in-depth series on the increased flooding in the Charleston area, said: “We explored one of the most important stories that hardly anyone is talking about — how melting ice in Greenland affects the gravitational pull on oceans. This has a direct effect on sea levels in South Carolina’s Lowcountry, where every inch of sea rise matters.”

Autumn Phillips, executive editor of The Post and Courier, added: “The Greenland Connection is a huge, creative swing to show how something happening half a globe away is changing things for us. The storytelling by Bartelme and the visuals by Petracca will capture your imagination — transporting readers while also making them think.”

The Greenland Connection was made possible by generous support from the Pulitzer Center, the Fund for Investigative Journalism and The Post and Courier Public Service and Investigative Reporting Fund. The story was made available online to subscribers on Sept. 17 and in print on Sept. 19. The story is available online at https://www.postandcourier.com/greenland/

The Post and Courier is a privately held, family-owned media company headquartered in Charleston, S.C. In keeping with its proud history, The Post and Courier is dedicated to serving its customers, employees and communities with unconditional integrity, and promises to deliver the highest standards of service and impactful, solutions-based journalism.

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