Scientists have found that Greenland’s ice melted during a warm period over the past million years.
Detailed analysis suggests the giant ice sheet is more fragile than previously thought, and greatly increases the risk of sea level rise, scientists say.
The new study provides the first direct evidence that the center, not just the edges, of Greenland’s ice sheet melted in the recent geological past and that the now ice-covered island was once home to a green tundra landscape.
Scientists re-examined a few inches of sediment from the bottom of a two-mile-deep ice core that was extracted from the heart of Greenland in 1993 and kept for 30 years in a storage facility in Colorado, USA.
The team was amazed to discover soil containing willow wood, insect fragments, fungi and poppy seeds in excellent condition, revealing that the ice there had melted within the last 416,000 years.
Professor Paul Berman, from the University of Vermont in the United States, who co-led the study, said the results suggest that Greenland’s ice melted and the island “greened” during a previous warm period, perhaps within the past million years.
If the ice covering central Greenland melts, most of the remaining ice on the island will have to melt too, “perhaps for thousands of years,” Berman explained, enough time to form soil and establish an ecosystem.
“This new study confirms that much of the sea level rise occurred at a time when the causes of global warming were not particularly severe, serving as a warning of the damage humans could cause if we continue to warm the climate,” said Professor Richard Alley, a leading climate scientist at Pennsylvania State University who reviewed the study.
Sea levels are rising more than two centimeters per decade today, and “accelerating,” Berman said. They will likely rise “several meters” by the end of the century.
If greenhouse gas emissions from burning fossil fuels are not “drastically reduced,” nearly all of Greenland’s ice melt over the next few centuries to a few thousand years would cause sea levels to rise by about 23 feet (700 cm), Berman says.
Source: New York Post
#disturbing #discovery #Greenland #lead #real #disaster
2024-08-06 16:42:14
