August 8, 2004

A warm Greenland

An interesting report from AFP as reported by Yahoo News: bq. Remnants of plants that could be several million years old have been discovered in samples of mud recovered from the bottom of Greenland's three-kilometre-deep (two-mile-deep) ice cap, the head of a group of international scientists said. bq. "There is a big possibility that this material is several million years old -- from a time when trees covered Greenland," Dorthe Dahl-Jensen, who heads a team of international scientists involved in the North Greenland Ice-core Project, said in a statement. And more: bq. "Reaching bedrock, frozen reddish mud was recovered with several centimetre-sized fragments of organic material looking like pine needles or pieces of bark," Dahl-Jensen said. This is very cool. We already have archaeological record that Greenlanders were growing Grapes for wine back in the 900's - this directly corresponds with the 400 year cycle of warming and cooling that we have been experiencing. At present, we are leaving the cooling period and entering a 400-year cycle of warming. Posted by DaveH at August 8, 2004 2:12 PM