Video: The Greenland Ice Sheet Vanished (VIDEO)
Caption
Scientists were stunned to find frozen plant fossils--twigs and leaves--preserved under a mile of ice on Greenland. The discovery, explained in this video, helps confirm a new and troubling understanding that the Greenland Ice Sheet has melted during recent warm periods in Earth's history--within the last million years. These periods were like the one we are now creating with human-caused climate change. Understanding the Greenland Ice Sheet in the past is critical for predicting how it will respond to climate warming in the future and how quickly it will melt. Since some twenty feet of sea-level rise is tied up in Greenland's ice, every coastal city in the world is at risk. This video shows how a long-lost ice core was rediscovered in a Danish freezer and then studied. The new research, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, provides strong evidence that Greenland is more sensitive to climate change than previously understood--and at risk of irreversibly melting.
Credit
Quincy Massey-Bierman
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