Scientists from the University of Colorado (USA) have found that climate change is increasingly exposing the Arctic landscape, which has not seen the Sun for 40 thousand years or more.
The research report appeared in the journal Nature Communications, and a short version is posted on the Science Alert portal. Researchers have released data from soil analysis on Baffin Land, an island in the Canadian province of Nunavut.
Deep fjords and ancient glaciers made this an ideal place to explore the Ice Age. For example, geologist and paleoclimatologist Gifford Miller from the University of Colorado has come here every year for the past 40 years. He also found disturbing changes.
According to him, the Arctic heats up two to three times faster than the rest of the world. If the trend continues, then all glaciers on the island will disappear. It's just a matter of time.
Part of the soil has already been exposed after the melting of the covers. Miller and his team took 48 samples of mosses and lichens that had been released from the ice sheet. Samples were taken from 30 different ice caps.
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Radiocarbon dating has shown that the plants have been under the ice for the past 40,000 years, and some of them may have been for 120,000 years.
“The strangest thing is that many of these mosses can start growing again, they are like zombies,” said Miller.
Denis Peredelsky