The current temperature level restoration shows that the previous decade in the cores is approximately 1.5 degrees warmer than the long-term average.
A recent clinical research study, based upon upgraded ice core information, exposes that the high temperatures in northern and central Greenland are unmatched when compared to the rebuilt climate conditions over the past 1000 years.
The environment of the last 1000 years rebuilded
Over the previous years, researchers from the Alfred Wegner Institute and the Niels Bohr Institute have teamed up to upgrade the existing ice cores with more recent data. To achieve this, they have actually carried out a number of missions to remote places on the Greenland ice sheet to drill new cores in locations where ice cores were formerly collected about 30 years earlier.
This has been done in order to get ice and snow samples from the latest years.
Comparing the water isotopic composition in the current samples with comparable records reaching a millennium back in time it is possible to rebuild climate from the year 1000 all the way as much as 2011.
The brand-new temperature reconstruction reveals that the most current decade in the cores are some 1.5 degrees warmer than the long-term average.
Associate professor Bo Vinther preparing an ice core for analysis. Credit: Christian Morel
This warming is special in the 1000-year viewpoint provided by the ice cores. Thus, it is clear that the signal of global warming has actually reached even the remote ice sheet locations in main and northern Greenland.
Increasing temperature levels and an increase in meltwater from the inland ice sheet fit
The new study goes on to compare the reconstructed Greenland temperature advancement to melt-water run-off from the Greenland ice sheet, showing that temperature levels and melt are closely related.
Hence, the increase in melt observed in current years is also most likely to be unique in the past 1000 years.
Rising sea levels are the repercussion
Associate professor Bo Møllesøe Vinther, who took part in the research study explains its significance:
” The close relationship in between higher temperatures and increasing melt of the Greenland ice sheet recorded in the research study is of terrific concern provided that Greenland warming is forecasted to continue due to continued emissions of greenhouse gasses. Melt from the Greenland Ice Sheet should thus be anticipated to contribute a growing number of to water level increase in the future.”
Reference: “Modern temperatures in main– north Greenland hottest in past millennium” by M. Hörhold, T. Münch, S. Weißbach, S. Kipfstuhl, J. Freitag, I. Sasgen, G. Lohmann, B. Vinther and T. Laepple, 18 January 2023, Nature.DOI: 10.1038/ s41586-022-05517-z.