3-million-year-old Landscape Found beneath Greenland Ice Sheet - but which, unlike in previous interglacials, is now slated to disappear by 1kiki

Goodbye, kind world (George Monbiot) - In common with all those generations which have contemplated catastrophe, we appear to be incapable of understanding what confronts us.

What is clear, however, from an abundance of worldwide indicators, is that global temperatures are on a path to be “far warmer than the warmest interglacials in millions of years,” said Bierman. “There is a 2.7-million-year-old soil sitting under Greenland. The ice sheet on top of it has not disappeared in the time in which humans became a species. But if we keep on our current trajectory, the ice sheet will not survive.

3-million-year-old Landscape Found beneath Greenland Ice Sheet

Thu, 04/17/2014 - 8:48pm
Joshua E. Brown, University of Vermont

Scientists were stunned to discover an ancient tundra landscape frozen under two miles of ice in Greenland. It’s been there for three million years — and may lead geologists to rethink how Greenland’s big ice works. UVM professor Paul Bierman led the team that reported the discovery in the journal Science. Courtesy of Joshua BrownScientists were stunned to discover an ancient tundra landscape frozen under two miles of ice in Greenland. It’s been there for three million years — and may lead geologists to rethink how Greenland’s big ice works. UVM professor Paul Bierman led the team that reported the discovery in the journal Science. Courtesy of Joshua BrownGlaciers are commonly thought to work like a belt sander. As they move over the land they scrape off everything — vegetation, soil, and even the top layer of bedrock. So scientists were greatly surprised to discover an ancient tundra landscape preserved under the Greenland Ice Sheet, below two miles of ice.

“We found organic soil that has been frozen to the bottom of the ice sheet for 2.7 million years,” said University of Vermont geologist Paul Bierman — providing strong evidence that the Greenland Ice Sheet has persisted much longer than previously known, enduring through many past periods of global warming.

He led an international team of scientists that reported their discovery on April 17 in the journal Science.

Antique landscapes

Greenland is a place of great interest to scientists and policymakers since the future stability of its huge ice sheet — the size of Alaska, and second only to Antarctica — will have a fundamental influence on how fast and high global sea levels rise from human-caused climate change.

“The ancient soil under the Greenland ice sheet helps to unravel an important mystery surrounding climate change,” said Dylan Rood a co-author on the new study from the Scottish Universities Environmental Research Centre and the University of California, Santa Barbara. “How did big ice sheets melt and grow in response to changes in temperature?”

The new discovery indicates that even during the warmest periods since the ice sheet formed, the center of Greenland remained stable; “it’s likely that it did not fully melt at any time,” Vermont’s Bierman said. This allowed a tundra landscape to be locked away, unmodified, under ice through millions of years of global warming and cooling.

“The traditional knowledge about glaciers is that they are very powerful agents of erosion and can effectively strip a landscape clean,” said study co-author Lee Corbett, a UVM graduate student who prepared the silty ice samples for analysis. Instead, “we demonstrate that the Greenland Ice Sheet is not acting as an agent of erosion; in fact, at it’s center, it has performed incredibly little erosion since its inception almost three million years ago.”

Rather than scraping and sculpting the landscape, the ice sheet has been frozen to the ground, “a refrigerator that’s preserved this antique landscape,” Bierman said.

Cosmic signal

The scientists tested seventeen “dirty ice” samples from the bottommost forty feet of the 10,019-foot GISP2 ice core extracted from Summit, Greenland, in 1993. “Over twenty years, only a few people had looked hard at the sediments from the bottom of the core,” Bierman said. From this sediment, he and a team at the University of Vermont's Cosmogenic Nuclide Laboratory extracted a rare form of the element beryllium, an isotope called beryllium-10. Formed by cosmic rays, it falls from the sky and sticks to rock and soil. The longer soil is exposed at Earth’s surface, the more beryllium-10 it accumulates. Measuring how much is in soil or a rock gives geologists a kind of exposure clock.

The researchers expected to only find soil eroded from glacier-scoured bedrock in the sediment at the bottom of the ice core. “So we thought we were going looking for a needle in haystack,” Bierman said. They planned to work diligently to find vanishingly small amounts of the beryllium — since the landscape under the ice sheet would have not been exposed to the sky. “It turned out that we found an elephant in a haystack,” he said; the silt had very high concentrations of the isotope when the team measured it on a particle accelerator at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.

"On a global basis, we only find these sorts of beryllium concentrations in soils that have developed over hundreds of thousands to millions of years,” said Joseph Graly, who analyzed the beryllium data while at the University of Vermont.

The new research, supported by funding from the National Science Foundation, shows that “the soil had been stable and exposed at the surface for somewhere between 200,000 and one million years before being covered by ice,” notes Ben Crosby, a member of the research team from Idaho State University.

To help interpret these unexpected findings, the team also measured nitrogen and carbon that could have been left by plant material in the core sample. “The fact that measurable amounts of organic material were found in the silty ice indicates that soil must have been present under the ice,” said co-author Andrea Lini at the University of Vermont — and its composition suggests that the pre-glacial landscape may have been a partially forested tundra.

“Greenland really was green! However, it was millions of years ago,” said Rood. “Greenland looked like the green Alaskan tundra, before it was covered by the second largest body of ice on Earth.” To confirm their findings about this ancient landscape, the researchers also measured beryllium levels in a modern permafrost tundra soil on the North Slope of Alaska. “The values were very similar,” said Bierman, “which made us more confident that what we found under Greenland was tundra soil.”

Future tense

Many geologists are seeking a long-term view of the history of the Greenland Ice Sheet, including how it moves and has shaped the landscape beneath it — with an eye toward better understanding its future behavior. It’s 656,000 square miles of ice, containing enough water, if fully melted, to raise global sea levels twenty-three feet — “yet we have very little information about what is happening at the bed with regards to erosion and landscape formation,” said Corbett.

What is clear, however, from an abundance of worldwide indicators, is that global temperatures are on a path to be “far warmer than the warmest interglacials in millions of years,” said Bierman. “There is a 2.7-million-year-old soil sitting under Greenland. The ice sheet on top of it has not disappeared in the time in which humans became a species. But if we keep on our current trajectory, the ice sheet will not survive. And once you clear it off, it’s really hard to put it back on.”

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Monday, April 21, 2014 7:31 PM

JEWELSTAITEFAN

Looks like Summit would be around 60 degrees latitude at the time of Atlantis, so the clime would have been like southern Alaska is now.

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Monday, April 21, 2014 7:45 PM

Goodbye, kind world (George Monbiot) - In common with all those generations which have contemplated catastrophe, we appear to be incapable of understanding what confronts us.

at the time of Atlantis

Well, now you're referencing the geologically nonexistent Atlantis to prove your point! Are you going to talk about Noah's ark next?

OONJERAH - We are too dumb to live and smart enough to wipe ourselves out.

"You, who live in any kind of comfort or convenience, do not know how these people can survive these things, do you? They will endure because there is no immediate escape from endurance. Some will die, the rest must live."

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Monday, April 21, 2014 7:55 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by 1kiki:
Well, now you're referencing the geologically nonexistent Atlantis

Not true. We know where it is, we just can't go that deep with submersibles that can break through the ocean's floor to expose the living society that still exists there.
You non-believers are like a cult.

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Monday, April 21, 2014 8:04 PM

America loves a winner!

Fathom the hypocrisy of a government that requires every citizen to prove they are insured... but not everyone must prove they are a citizen

I'm just a red pill guy in a room full of blue pill addicts.

" AU, that was great, LOL!! " - Chrisisall

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Monday, April 21, 2014 8:07 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by AURaptor:

Hahahahah, very funny. Wanna try a NOT-NUT source?

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Monday, April 21, 2014 8:17 PM

America loves a winner!

Can't, Chrissy. Too many nutty AGW studies involved.

Fathom the hypocrisy of a government that requires every citizen to prove they are insured... but not everyone must prove they are a citizen

I'm just a red pill guy in a room full of blue pill addicts.

" AU, that was great, LOL!! " - Chrisisall

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Monday, April 21, 2014 8:20 PM

Goodbye, kind world (George Monbiot) - In common with all those generations which have contemplated catastrophe, we appear to be incapable of understanding what confronts us.

Yes, because all but one actual climate scientist from all over the globe is too beholden to Obama to see the truth. Darn that Obama. It's all his fault.

OONJERAH - We are too dumb to live and smart enough to wipe ourselves out.

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Monday, April 21, 2014 8:45 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by AURaptor:
Too many nutty AGW studies involved.

Just so we're clear, sure, there ARE a bunch of nutty AGW studies by them that want to ride the coat-tails of what they see as a 'movement'. And they're just as bad as the nyeah nyeah crowd IMO.
Unfortunately, a LOT of reading & reviewing of evidence is necessary. And since we all know your SAT scores we also know reading comprehension was not your strongest point (not bad, just not great), so really, you can't hope to make a totally informed judgement all on your own.

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Monday, April 21, 2014 8:57 PM

America loves a winner!

I was right about Evolution, and Firefly, all on my own.

Please.

Fathom the hypocrisy of a government that requires every citizen to prove they are insured... but not everyone must prove they are a citizen

I'm just a red pill guy in a room full of blue pill addicts.

" AU, that was great, LOL!! " - Chrisisall

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Monday, April 21, 2014 9:00 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by AURaptor:
Please.

NO.

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Monday, April 21, 2014 11:08 PM

America loves a winner!

Quote:
Originally posted by chrisisall:
NO.

The real party of 'no'.

( how is that a party ? )

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Monday, April 21, 2014 11:13 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by AURaptor:
The real party of 'no'.
( how is that a party ? )

NO comment.

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Monday, April 21, 2014 11:38 PM

Goodbye, kind world (George Monbiot) - In common with all those generations which have contemplated catastrophe, we appear to be incapable of understanding what confronts us.

So, we have real scientists who made a real discovery, who - based on their observations and calculations - indicate we're entering a realm unknown during human existence. To which rappy responds IT'S NOT HAPPENING! Because - pay no attention to the real ice - LOOK AT MY GRAPH!!! My graph is real!! ICE MELTING IS FAKE!!

So rappy, you want to join the bible thumpers and young earth creationists in rejecting actual observations?

OONJERAH - We are too dumb to live and smart enough to wipe ourselves out.

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Monday, April 21, 2014 11:40 PM

America loves a winner!

Quote:
... indicate we're entering a realm unknown during human existence

You mean that, before TODAY, mankind has been able to clearly and accurately predict the future ?

ROFLMAO !!

NOW who is the frelling nutter ?

Keep 'em coming, 1kiki. I NEED THE LAUGHTER !

99.999 % of the history of the PLANET has been beyond the realm of human knowledge!

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Monday, April 21, 2014 11:47 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by AURaptor:
99.999 % of the history of the PLANET has been beyond the realm of human knowledge!

Rapturd math.
I could do that in pre-school.

Oh wait- define 'knowledge'.

Oh, you CAN'T.

*Emily Litella*
"Nevermind."

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Tuesday, April 22, 2014 12:03 AM

Goodbye, kind world (George Monbiot) - In common with all those generations which have contemplated catastrophe, we appear to be incapable of understanding what confronts us.

"You mean that, before TODAY, mankind has been able to clearly and accurately predict the future ?"

Well, using observation and principles derived from study, it has been done. Orbits have been calculated. Eclipses predicted. Electrons have been be made to light bulbs. And, having measured global temperature increase, and the rate of ice melting, a prediction was made of an ice-free Greenland. That is the process of science. Observation. Theory. Testing. Observation.

Which part do you dispute?

OONJERAH - We are too dumb to live and smart enough to wipe ourselves out.

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Tuesday, April 22, 2014 12:09 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by 1kiki:
Which part do you dispute?

Any in his political version of 'gaydar' apparently..

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Tuesday, April 22, 2014 8:01 AM