Whether the ice cap in western Greenland grows or shrinks depends on a balance between snow accumulation and melting. In the past, warm periods increased snowfall which caused it to grow. Today, melting is winning. Photo by Ruben Ramos/Alamy Stock Photo
Climate Change Is Pushing Greenland Over the Edge
New data from Greenland shows that modern warming is outpacing even historically warm eras like the Medieval Warm Period.
The research team led by Osman, a geoscientist at the University of Arizona, came to Greenland to extract a 140-meter-long ice core. This core stretches nearly to bedrock and, in the gases and chemicals housed within, holds evidence of climate change over the past 2,000 years. Their analysis of the core shows that in this place during the Medieval Warm Period, a roughly 400-year phase of higher global temperatures around 1,000 years ago, the ice was growing thicker and advancing—the opposite of what it’s doing today.
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