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Rock samples collected from the Greenland ice sheet’s Prudhoe Dome show it completely melted in the past 10,000 years — and could vanish again amid climate change….
But the rocks they uncovered on that 2023 expedition contain chemical signatures showing that Prudhoe Dome had completely melted within the past 10,000 years — and it might soon suffer the same fate amid modern climate change.
The results published Monday in the journal Nature Geoscience hold a warning for a warming planet, lead author Caleb Walcott-George said. The study suggests that large portions of Greenland were ice-free in Earth’s recent past, when global temperatures weren’t much higher than they are now. If the same melting occurred today, it would raise average sea levels anywhere from 7.5 inches to 2.4 feet.
Present-day melting may not precisely emulate what happened in the past, the researchers acknowledged. The cause of modern climate change — pollution primarily from burning fossil fuels — is distinct from the slight wobbles in Earth’s orbit that triggered warming thousands of years ago.
But researchers said their findings could be used to improve the computer models used to simulate how the ice sheet responds to warming.
“Understanding how the ice sheet evolved in the past … allows us to make better predictions about our future,” said Walcott-George, a glacial geologist at the University of Kentucky.
The Arctic is the fastest-warming place on the planet, and Greenland contributes more to rising oceans than any other ice mass on Earth. If the entire ice sheet melted, it would boost global sea levels by 24 feet…
