UVM scientists stunned to discover plants beneath mile-deep Greenland ice uvm.edu - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from uvm.edu Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
By Kevin Krajick
In 1966, U.S. Army scientists drilled through nearly a mile of ice in northwestern Greenland and pulled up a 15-foot-long core of sediment from the bottom. The sample, abandoned and largely forgotten in a series of freezers for decades, was accidentally rediscovered in 2017. Researchers who later examined it were stunned to find it contained not just the usual sand and rock found under glacial ice, but well-preserved remains of twigs and leaves the first discovery of onetime plant life under this apparently long-frozen part of the world.
In a new study published this week in the
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, scientists from a dozen institutions say the discovery indicates that most or all of Greenland’s ice melted one or more times within about the last million years, allowing vegetation or even forests to grow. The finding strongly bolsters a 2016 study of bedrock retrieved from the bottom of an even deeper core that indicated the ice had la
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VIDEO: 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. view more
Credit: Quincy Massey-Bierman
In 1966, US Army scientists drilled down through nearly a mile of ice in northwestern Greenland and pulled up a fifteen-foot-long tube of dirt from the bottom. Then this frozen sediment was lost in a freezer for decades. It was accidentally rediscovered in 2017.
In 2019, University of Vermont scientist Andrew Christ looked at it through his microscope and couldn t believe what he was seeing: twigs and leaves instead of just sand and rock. That suggested that the ice was gone in the recent geologic past and that a vegetated landscape, perhaps a boreal forest, stood where a mile-deep ice sheet as big as Alaska stands today.
The Zealandia Switch : Missing Link in Big Natural Climate Shifts? | Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory columbia.edu - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from columbia.edu Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
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IMAGE: Moraines constructed during repeated advance-retreat cycles of one of the glaciers that extended out from the Southern Alps in New Zealand during the last ice age. Around 18,000 years ago,. view more
Credit: Photo courtesy of Aaron Putnam
Orono, Maine The origins of ice age climate changes may lie in the Southern Hemisphere, where interactions among the westerly wind system, the Southern Ocean and the tropical Pacific can trigger rapid, global changes in atmospheric temperature, according to an international research team led by the University of Maine.
The mechanism, dubbed the Zealandia Switch, relates to the general position of the Southern Hemisphere westerly wind belt the strongest wind system on Earth and the continental platforms of the southwest Pacific Ocean, and their control on ocean currents. Shifts in the latitude of the westerly winds affects the strength of the subtropical oceanic gyres and, in turn, influences the release of energy