
Baffin Island landscapes ice-free for first time in 40,000 years
Jan. 25 (UPI) -- Rapidly retreating Arctic glaciers have revealed ancient moss and lichens, ice-free for the first in 40,000 years, according to new analysis by researchers at the University of Colorado, Boulder. The survey of newly thawed plants, contextualized by temperature records gleaned from Greenland ice cores, suggests the Arctic is experiencing summer highs warmer than any century in 115,000 years. "The Arctic is currently warming two to three times faster than the rest of the globe, so naturally, glaciers and ice caps are going to react faster," Simon Pendleton, doctoral researcher at Boulder's Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research, said in a news release. Pendleton and his colleagues radiocarbon dated plants found near the edges of 30 ice caps on Baffin Island, the fifth-larg...