Vancouver Sun: A world-renowned Ellesmere Island fossil site has shed startling new light on how warm the Canadian Arctic was about four million years ago -- and just how hot it could get in the coming decades.
Six researchers from Canada, the United States and the Netherlands have announced their findings after probing fossilized wood and the well-preserved remains of prehistoric plants and soil bacteria from Ellesmere's Beaver Pond site, a paleontological time capsule near the Eureka science station on Canada's northernmost land mass...
The team has shown that the High Arctic locale once had a relatively balmy average annual temperature of 0 C -- about 19 degrees warmer than today. The clearer picture of the ancient Arctic has potentially important -- and worrisome implications for how quickly and severely the region could witness a temperature spike given current climate-change trends, the researchers warn... 'Our results indicate that a significant increase in Arctic temperatures may be imminent.'...
The Beaver Pond site is only about four million years old and dates from a time when Ellesmere Island was at roughly the same High North latitude it is today. Furthermore, the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere during that time, the Pliocene era, was almost identical to the elevated CO2 levels of today's warmed-up globe -- making the Beaver Pond site an unusually accurate 'proxy' for the 21st century Arctic...
