Long-forgotten frozen soil sample offers a warning for the future
Enlarge / Water and sediment pour off the melting margin of the Greenland ice sheet. (credit: Jason Edwards/Getty Images)
About 400,000 years ago, large parts of Greenland were ice-free. Scrubby tundra basked in the Sun's rays on the island's northwest highlands. Evidence suggests that a forest of spruce trees, buzzing with insects, covered the southern part of Greenland. Global sea level was much higher then, between 20 and 40 feet above today's levels. Around the world, land that today is home to hundreds of millions of people was under water.
Scientists have known for awhile that the Greenland ice sheet had mostly disappeared at some point in the past million years, but not precisely when.
In a new study in the journal Science, we determined the date, using frozen soil extracted during the Cold War from beneath a nearly mile-thick section of the Greenland ice sheet.