High Arctic Holocene temperature record from the Agassiz ice cap and Greenland ice sheet evolution

• Published in: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
• Main Authors: Lecavalier, Benoit S., Fisher, David A., Milne, Glenn A., Vinther, Bo M., Tarasov, Lev, Huybrechts, Philippe, Lacelle, Denis, Main, Brittany, Zheng, James, Bourgeois, Jocelyne, Dyke, Arthur S.
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Published: National Academy of Sciences 2017
• Subjects: Physical Sciences; Agassiz Ice Cap; Arctic; Greenland; Climate change; Ice cap; Ice Sheet
• Online Access: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5468641/; http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28512225; https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1616287114

Reconstructions of past environmental changes are important for placing recent climate change in context and testing climate models. Periods of past climates warmer than today provide insight on how components of the climate system might respond in the future. Here, we report on an Arctic climate record from the Agassiz ice cap. Our results show that early Holocene air temperatures exceed present values by a few degrees Celsius, and that industrial era rates of temperature change are unprecedented over the Holocene period (∼12,000 y). We also demonstrate that the enhanced warming leads to a large response of the Greenland ice sheet; providing information on the ice sheet's sensitivity to elevated temperatures and thus helping to better estimate its future evolution.