Each summer, about 300 American scientists—mostly climate scientists, with a smattering of biologists and geologists—make the long trip up to Greenland to do fieldwork. These scientists are usually funded by the National Science Foundation, a federal grant-making body. And because of that, they get free transportation for the thousand-mile journey, courtesy of the only other significant group of Americans in Greenland: the U.S. military.
President Trump’s threats to annex Greenland, some American climatologists say, could imperil the climate change research they’ve spent decades building. A growing number of those scientists are now stepping into the public sphere and organizing to save their work and support their Greenlandic collaborators. But they’re up against an administration intent on stripping away the funding they need to do their work—and the American populace whose hearts and minds they’re trying to sway have little familiarity with the territory. Very few outside the scientific and military worlds have actually been there.
Mia Tuccillo, a Ph.D. student and climate scientist at Northwestern University, remembers her first trip to Greenland. “You walk up the ramp into this huge, open space,” Tuccillo said. She took a U.S. Air Mobility Command cargo plane up to Pituffik Space Base to study algae and cyanobacteria biomarkers. Though Tuccillo isn’t particularly comfortable flying in with the Air Force, she said, they tend to give her less trouble about her equipment than commercial airport security.
“TSA’s always like … ‘What is this?’” Tuccillo laughed. She travels with a coring apparatus: a long, serrated rod, a pipe in which to hold sediment—a big tube full of mud, to laypeople—and a “really heavy hammer that looks like a donut.” They don’t get it. The military asks fewer questions.
For the past two years, Tuccillo has flown up to Greenland to live and work in the town of Narsaq, population 1,242. While in Narsaq, she studies changes in the community’s water sources and leads community workshops, involving the town’s young people in her work. This summer, though, far fewer American scientists like her will be going to Greenland—a few dozen, rather than a few hundred.
This can be blamed in part on Donald Trump’s obsession with the island. The president has been saying that “the ownership and control of Greenland is an absolute necessity” since at least 2024, and his threats—military and otherwise—against Greenland reached a fever pitch in early 2026. He said he wouldn’t rule out military force or economic coercion, and claimed that Greenland is “surrounded” by Russian and Chinese ships.
Greenlanders, understandably, got nervous. “I slept quite badly, for a few days,” said Inuuteq Kriegel, a Greenlandic reporter and cultural ambassador. The Americans Kriegel works with as a tour guide and cultural ambassador, he said, started apologizing to him for their president and their country, and cafés in Nuuk were swarmed with reporters. Greenland is sovereign in all aspects except defense and foreign policy, in which it is part of the Kingdom of Denmark—and, historically, Greenland has used that sovereignty to support international scientific partnerships as the ice sheet melts.
“I’ve heard from colleagues who are nervous, who are fearful,” said Twila Moon, an American climatologist who has studied in Greenland for over 20 years. “Particularly during the times when it seemed that military force was on the table, I mean, there were open discussions about stockpiling food.”
All this is jeopardizing Greenlandic-U.S. science partnerships stretching back decades, upon which much of modern climate science depends. International scientists, like many Greenlanders, aren’t happy about it—and they say that if Trump’s rhetorical posturing gets in the way of their research, the harm caused could be global.
One of those early partnerships was the late-1980s construction of Summit Station, a research center on Greenland’s ice sheet built by Greenlandic and American researchers to study ice cores in temperatures below minus 30 degrees. There, they produced some of the longest ice cores ever collected, historical records that go back hundreds of thousands of years. That work, Tuccillo said, “has led to the indisputable evidence that we have increased carbon dioxide concentrations at an unprecedented rate.”
“By permitting scientists from around the world to travel to Greenland to do climate research, people in Greenland have really contributed to global understanding of this problem,” said Yarrow Axford, a paleolimnologist and Tuccillo’s adviser. Axford started working in Greenland in 2010, and in the years since, she’s watched the eyes of the world turn north. Today, Greenland is the global center of research on rising sea levels. It’s home to the northern hemisphere’s only ice sheet, which, if melted, could raise sea levels by 22 feet—catastrophic for every coastal community in the world.
“Greenland’s future is all of our futures,” Axford said. But this year, the number of people that the United States is sending to study what that future might look like is shrinking drastically.
Most summers, the U.S. sends “upwards of 300” scientists to study in Greenland, said Jennifer Mercer, the National Science Foundation’s Office of Polar Programs head, in 2025 congressional testimony. This year, an NSF representative told me, only 45 to 50 researchers will be making the trip. The government, the representative said, is prioritizing projects that “protect and advance American interests and ensure prosperity of America’s Arctic residents.”
American scientists like Tuccillo, Axford, and Moon are growing increasingly vocal in their opposition to these moves. They’ve released two open letters—a big deal, since “it’s pretty rare for scientists to get involved in politics,” and many fear censorship from their universities, Tuccillo said. Despite all that, they called for Greenlandic sovereignty, in direct contravention of Trump’s imperial dreams.
“We vehemently oppose President Trump’s aggressive stance regarding Greenland, and reiterate—as Greenland’s leaders have clearly stated—that Greenland is not anyone’s to ‘buy’ or ‘take,’” they wrote, in a statement signed by over 200 scientists. “Greenland belongs to its people.”
When JD Vance visited Greenland months ago, he probably didn’t even have to get his passport stamped: He never left the U.S. military base. And President Trump, despite his abiding interest in colonial expansion into Greenland, has been known to confuse it with Iceland and reportedly “hasn’t spoken to” any Greenlanders, thousands of whom protested against his threats. But America’s leaders’ imperial desires in the north aren’t likely to go away.
Just a week ago, Gregory Guillot of the U.S. Northern Command testified in Congress about expanding the U.S. footprint in Greenland: “We don’t have a permanent presence for some of the maritime capabilities that we need,” Guillot said. “The need there is very real.”
Meanwhile, scientists like Axford continue to speak up—though she wonders if it will feel “strange” to fly into Greenland on a military plane in the future.
“As scientists who do research in Greenland, I think we feel this very personally. We are keenly aware that Greenland is not a piece of ice or a big hunk of rock in the ocean, which are ways it’s been characterized—it’s home to people. So I think it’s our responsibility,” she said, “to share what we know.”
