In a groundbreaking discovery scientists have unearthed plant and insect remains beneath a two-mile-deep ice core from the center of Greenland providing compelling evidence that the island was largely green within the past million years. This period coincides with much lower atmospheric carbon levels than today.
The study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, suggests a higher potential for global sea level rise due to current human-caused climate change than previously estimated.
The ice core, named GISP2, was drilled in 1993. Although its rock and ice had been extensively studied, the fossilized remains in the mixed sediment at the bottom had gone unnoticed until recently. Lead author Paul Bierman, a professor of environmental science at the University of Vermont, described the unexpected discovery.
“Literally, we saw the fossils within the first hour, maybe half hour, of working on it,” Bierman told our reporter.
Within this three-inch soil layer, researchers found willow wood, spores from spikemoss, fungi, the compound eye of an insect, and a poppy seed, all indicative of a vibrant tundra ecosystem. The melting of ice at the center of Greenland suggests that the entire island was likely ice-free during this period.
Implications for Climate Change
If greenhouse gas emissions from burning fossil fuels are not drastically reduced, Greenland’s ice sheet could almost entirely melt over the next several centuries to a few millennia. This could lead to a sea level rise of approximately 23 feet (seven meters), potentially inundating coastal cities worldwide.
“Hundreds of millions of people around the world are going to lose their places to live,” Bierman warned.
Challenging Previous Theories
This new work builds on recent findings that challenge the longstanding theory of Greenland as an impenetrable ice fortress for the past several million years. In 2016, scientists used radioactive dating on bedrock from the same 1993 ice core, estimating it to be no more than 1.1 million years old. Their modeling indicated that if the ice melted at the GISP2 site, then 90% of Greenland would have been ice-free.
In 2019, Bierman and an international team reexamined another ice core from the abandoned US military base, Camp Century, near the Greenland coast. They found leaves and moss in the sediment, dating the ice’s disappearance to 416,000 years ago. This prompted Bierman to revisit the 1993 core, confirming the presence of organic matter.
“The ice had to be gone, because otherwise, there would be no plants, no insects, and no soil fungus,” said Bierman. “Now we know for sure that the ice was gone not just at Camp Century but at GISP2 right at the center of the ice sheet. Now we know the whole ice sheet is vulnerable to melting.”
Co-author Halley Mastro, a graduate student at the University of Vermont who studied the fossils, emphasized the need for further drilling into Greenland’s ice cores to uncover more ancient organisms. These findings could provide crucial insights into our planet’s climatic future.
It’s so obvious once you know it’s there but if you didn’t expect it to be there, and you weren’t looking for these tiny little dark flecks that float a little bit differently, you would never see them,” Mastro told our reporter.
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