Under the Ice

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More than 1,000 years ago, the Viking Erik the Red stumbled upon an ice-covered landmass and, wanting to attract settlers, engaged in some exaggerated advertising, calling it Greenland,

Turns out, it might actually have been green once, new research shows.

Nowadays, roughly 98 percent of the world’s largest island is covered in ice, with patches of green along the coasts. But the latest study, published earlier this month, found that even at the center of the island, there lay a green ecosystem.

“Our new data is the strongest confirmation yet that the ice in the center of the island vanished and was replaced by a tundra ecosystem,” lead author Paul Bierman of the University of Vermont told LiveScience.

Bierman and his colleagues sleepwalked into the discovery as they were examining a sample of ice core extracted in 1993 from two miles under the surface of the ice sheet. “The original plan with the sample was to measure (carbon-dating) isotopes,” said Bierman.

Instead, they found willow wood, insect parts, fungi, and a poppy seed, all in excellent condition.

“That was a spine-tingling moment,” Bierman told Radio-Canada.

But however beguiling, this discovery was bad news.

“These fossils are beautiful, but, yes, we go from bad to worse,” said Bierman, referring to the discovery’s implications regarding the consequences of man-made climate change.

According to their findings, the central Greenlandic tundra – an area of vegetation where cold temperatures hinder tree growth, while grasses and mosses thrive – existed around a million years ago, when the atmosphere was not nearly as rich in carbon dioxide as it is today.

Today, the ice melt from Greenland contributes a great deal to rising sea levels, estimated at around 23 feet once all ice has melted. By the end of the century, it could already amount to several feet.

“It’s not about doom and gloom,” Bierman said, adding he believes humans can find a solution to global warming. “Nature has taken this ice sheet away in the past, and it has come back.”

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