This is the conclusion reached by scientists from the Autonomous University of Barcelona. Together with their colleagues from Norway and Britain, they analyzed the Pliocene climate.
The Pliocene is the era of the Neogene period, which began 5.3 million years ago and ended 2.5 million years ago. It was followed by the Pleistocene era. Analysis of the features of the Pliocene, according to scientists, will allow us to understand what we should expect in the future and how global warming will affect our life.
Scientists have studied the bottom of the region located northwest of the island of Spitsbergen - a vast polar archipelago. The focus was on algae and microorganisms. Their chemical analysis helped to establish what climatic changes were characteristic of the Pliocene epoch.
According to experts, 4 million years ago there was almost no snow at the North Pole, and this situation could happen again. The formation of the ice cover took place about 2.6 million years ago - then on the Earth there was a change in ocean currents, and the climate became colder and drier. First, ice began to form in the Arctic Ocean, and then on the continents of the Northern Hemisphere. The alternation of ice ages with periods of warming allowed for more detailed modeling of the climate changes that we should expect.
Earlier, American scientists found that in 2014 there was a reduction in the area of the Arctic ice to 5.02 million km ² - this figure is one of the lowest ever observed in the region. The Arctic loses up to 13% of its ice every decade.
Arctic ice by the end of the century will completely disappear in the summer. The reduction in the area of ice has both negative and positive features. The first should include the extinction of some species. On the positive side, there are new opportunities for mining in the region.