Cold Greenland was once a hotspot

Greenland was once much warmer than previously thought, say scientists who have discovered remains of ancient life in lake mud of the region that survived the last ice age. The mud, discovered by researchers at the Northwestern University in the US, has remains of common flies nestled within it, which record two interglacial periods in northwest Greenland.

Although researchers have long known these two periods — the early Holocene and Last Interglacial — experienced warming in the Arctic due to changes in the Earth’s orbit, the mix of fly species preserved from these times shows that Greenland was even warmer than previously thought.

This information could help researchers better gauge Greenland’s sensitivity to warming, by testing and improving models of climate and ice sheet behaviour. Those models could then improve predictions of how Greenland’s ice sheet, which covers 80 per cent of the Arctic country and holds enough ice to equal 20 feet of global sea level, might respond to man-made global warming.

“One of the big uncertainties in climate science remains how fast the Earth changes when it gets warmer. Geology gives us an opportunity to see what happened when the Earth was warmer than today,” said Yarrow Axford, an associate professor at Northwestern.

People might be surprised to see how today’s frigid Greenland looked during the last two interglacial periods. Today, northwest Greenland hovers in the 30s and low 40s Fahrenheit and weathers snowstorms in summer.