From Bad to Worse for Greenland—and Humanity
Poppy seeds and willow twigs found under two miles of ice confirm Greenland ice sheet melted in recent past, showing increased risk of sea-level catastrophe in a warmer future

By JOSHUA BROWN
August 5, 2024

The story of Greenland keeps getting greener—and scarier.

A new study provides the first direct evidence that the center—not just the edges—of Greenland’s ice sheet melted away in the recent geological past and the now-ice-covered island was then home to a green, tundra landscape.

A team of scientists re-examined a few inches of sediment from the bottom of a two-mile-deep ice core extracted at the very center of Greenland in 1993—and held for 30 years in a Colorado storage facility. They were amazed to discover soil that contained willow wood, insect parts, fungi, and a poppy seed (at center, below) in pristine condition.



“These fossils are beautiful,” says Paul Bierman, a scientist at the University of Vermont who co-led the new study with UVM graduate student Halley Mastro and nine other researchers, “but, yes, we go from bad to worse,” in what this implies about the impact of human-caused climate change on the melting of the Greenland ice sheet.

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