{"id":6773,"date":"2023-07-31T10:00:00","date_gmt":"2023-07-31T10:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/modernsciences.org\/staging\/4414\/?p=6773"},"modified":"2023-07-21T09:04:53","modified_gmt":"2023-07-21T09:04:53","slug":"when-greenland-was-green-ancient-soil-from-beneath-a-mile-of-ice-offers-warnings-for-the-future","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/modernsciences.org\/staging\/4414\/when-greenland-was-green-ancient-soil-from-beneath-a-mile-of-ice-offers-warnings-for-the-future\/","title":{"rendered":"When Greenland was green: Ancient soil from beneath a mile of ice offers warnings for the future"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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\n Water and sediment pour off the melting margin of the Greenland ice sheet.\n Jason Edwards\/Photodisc via Getty Images<\/a><\/span>\n <\/figcaption>\n <\/figure>\n\nPaul Bierman<\/a>, University of Vermont<\/a><\/em> and Tammy Rittenour<\/a>, Utah State University<\/a><\/em><\/span>\n\n

About 400,000 years ago, large parts of Greenland were ice-free. Scrubby tundra basked in the Sun\u2019s rays on the island\u2019s northwest highlands. Evidence suggests that a forest of spruce<\/a> trees, buzzing with insects, covered the southern part of Greenland. Global sea level was much higher then, between 20 and 40 feet above today\u2019s levels<\/a>. Around the world, land that today is home to hundreds of millions of people was under water.<\/p>\n\n

Scientists have known for awhile that the Greenland ice sheet had mostly disappeared at some point in the past million years<\/a>, but not precisely when. <\/p>\n\n

In a new study in the journal Science<\/a>,\nwe determined the date, using frozen soil extracted during the Cold War<\/a> from beneath a nearly mile-thick section of the Greenland ice sheet.<\/p>\n\n

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