Findings indicate an ice-free landscape in a warmer climate.
A new study led by the University of Manitoba has found that most or all of Greenland was ice-free for a period of time earlier than believed, indicating that it is more sensitive to climate change than previously understood.
In 1966, US Army scientists drilled down through nearly 1,390 meters of ice in northwest Greenland, and pulled up a more than three meter tube of dirt from the bottom. The frozen sediment was moved to a freezer in Copenhagen in 1994 and forgotten. In 2017, the sample was again moved to a new freezer and the frozen sediments were accidentally rediscovered.
In 2019, two samples of sediments were studied by a team of scientists from Denmark and the US, and the team couldn’t believe what they saw: twigs and leaves instead of just sand and rock. That suggested that the ice was gone in the recent geologic past—and that a vegetated landscape, perhaps a boreal forest, stood where a mile-deep ice sheet stands today.
Continue reading at University of Manitoba
Image via University of Manitoba
