Greenland Was Much Greener 416,000 Years Ago

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https://eos.org/articles/greenland-was-much-greener-416000-years-ago

By Bill Morris, Eos/AGU. 

Excerpt: In 2019, a team of scientists glimpsed an ancient, shrubby landscape at the base of a long-forgotten ice core—rare evidence that Greenland wasn’t always completely covered in ice. Now, they have pinpointed the age of that ecosystem, and the implications are disturbing—Greenland’s ice sheet, the finds show, could melt at any time, contributing to catastrophic sea level rise. ...The team reported the find in 2021 but at the time were unable to accurately date the deposits. Doing so, said coauthor Tammy Rittenour, a paleoclimatologist with Utah State University, is crucial for “understanding the conditions at which you can melt the Greenland ice sheet.” ...Climate variability driven by the El Niño–Southern Oscillation, North Atlantic Oscillation, and other patterns, Cronin said, could have driven Earth’s climate, ocean circulation, and ice dynamics to tipping points not predicted by current CO2 modeling. “I think this variability represents aspects of Earth’s climate system that we don’t fully understand or appreciate,” Cronin said. ...Although it is not yet possible to say whether Greenland was completely ice free during this period, the scale of the loss was immense. At Camp Century, “nearly a mile of ice disappeared,” Bierman said. “It means that nature on its own, without fossil fuel emissions in the atmosphere, removed a significant portion of the ice sheet.” ...At the very minimum, the melting detected at Camp Century would have added around 1.4 meters (5 feet) to sea level. If the entire Greenland ice sheet melted, it would have added 7 meters (23 feet). If that happened today, it would devastate most of the world’s coastal towns and cities.... 

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