"The first study from GreenDrill -an ambitious project to recover rock samples buried thousands of feet beneath the Greenland Ice Sheet-finds that Greenland's Prudhoe Dome ice cap had fully melted around 7,000 years ago, much more recently than previously thought. This research, co-led by Columbia University and the University at Buffalo, is intended to assess how sensitive Greenland's ice is to climate change."
""The Holocene is a time known for climate stability, when humans first began developing farming practices and taking steps toward civilization," says University at Buffalo's Jason Briner, who co-leads the GreenDrill project. "If natural, mild climate change of that era melted Prudhoe Dome and kept it retreated for potentially thousands of years, it may only be a matter of time before it begins peeling back again from today's human-induced climate change,""
Sediment drilled from beneath 1,700 feet of ice was last exposed to daylight 6,000 to 8,200 years ago. Prudhoe Dome in northwestern Greenland is an ice dome about 1,700 feet thick covering 965 square miles. Evidence indicates the Prudhoe Dome had fully melted around 7,000 years ago and remained retreated for potentially thousands of years during the Holocene. The Holocene experienced relatively mild, stable climates compared with glacial periods. Exposure ages imply that modest Holocene warming was sufficient to remove this dome. Sub-ice samples can identify where melting may begin and improve local sea-level risk estimates.
Read at State of the Planet
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