Early Pleistocene Greenland Was ‘At Least 9C’ Warmer Than Today
Evidence of abundant lakes and ponds and the remains of vascular plants, warmth-demanding beetles, sponges, and spruce forests…in a newly-discovered organic-rich deposit 480 m above sea level in High Arctic (76.4°N) northwest Greenland indicates the local climate was similar to today’s southern Greenland (~60°N) and North America during the Early Pleistocene ice age
Scientists analyze the habitat temperature thresholds for modern plants, trees, insects, mammals, etc., and compare these values to the climate conditions these same species were living in according to the paleoclimate fossil record to determine how much warmer (or colder) the past was relative to the present.
About two million years ago (Early Pleistocene), CO2 levels were estimated to have hovered around 300 ppm, which is yet more evidence CO2 does NOT drive temperature.
A glacier site in northwest Greenland, Pingorsuit, sits 480 m above sea level. It is currently covered in “continuous permafrost” that is still 25 cm thick in July (Bennike et al., 2023). Modern mean July temperatures only reach 1-2°C here.
Organic deposits discovered at this site in 2019 reveal the climate was much warmer than today during the Early Pleistocene.
Picea mariana (spruce) existed at this High Arctic location at that time, but the growth limit latitude for P. mariana today is only the southern tip of Greenland and North America.
“At the Pingorsuit Glacier in North-West Greenland, an organic-rich deposit was discovered at an elevation of 480 m above sea level. The sediments contained remains of vascular plants, mosses, beetles, caddisflies, midges, bryozoans, sponges, and other invertebrates. The fossils were deposited in a boreal environment with a mean July air temperature that was at least 9 °C higher than at present.”
The Beaver Pond site at 78°N was so warm and permafrost-free during the mid-Pliocene (~3-4 million years ago) that it could accommodate grass-grazing megafaunas such as horses and deer.
Even camels lived in the High Arctic at this time.
There appears to be no evidence supporting the claim that the High Arctic’s modern climate is unusually warm relative to the past, or when there were allegedly much lower CO2 ppm values.
See more here climatechangedispatch
Header image: bethziekan.com
Some bold emphasis added
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Frank S.
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It would appear that despite Greenland’s tectonic shift southward (it used to cover the North Pole), its glaciation didn’t really establish itself until the last Ice Age.
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