Journal
NATURE
Volume 493, Issue 7433, Pages 489-494Publisher
NATURE PUBLISHING GROUP
DOI: 10.1038/nature11789
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Funding
- Belgium (FNRS-CFB)
- Belgium (FWO)
- Canada (NRCan/GSC)
- China (CAS)
- Denmark (FIST)
- France (IPEV)
- France (CNRS/INSU)
- France (CEA)
- France (ANR)
- Germany (AWI)
- Iceland (RannIs)
- Japan (NIPR)
- South Korea (KOPRI)
- The Netherlands (NWO/ALW)
- Sweden (VR)
- Switzerland (SNF)
- United Kingdom (NERC)
- USA (US NSF, Office of Polar Programs)
- EU
- Natural Environment Research Council [NE/F020600/1, NE/F021194/1, bas0100024] Funding Source: researchfish
- Directorate For Geosciences
- Office of Polar Programs (OPP) [0806407] Funding Source: National Science Foundation
- Office Of Internatl Science &Engineering
- Office Of The Director [968391] Funding Source: National Science Foundation
- Office of Polar Programs (OPP)
- Directorate For Geosciences [0806387, 0806377, 0806414, 0909541] Funding Source: National Science Foundation
- NERC [NE/F021194/1, bas0100024, NE/F020600/1] Funding Source: UKRI
- Grants-in-Aid for Scientific Research [21221002, 23681001, 22221002, 21671001, 22540426] Funding Source: KAKEN
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Efforts to extract a Greenland ice core with a complete record of the Eemian interglacial (130,000 to 115,000 years ago) have until now been unsuccessful. The response of the Greenland ice sheet to the warmer-than-present climate of the Eemian has thus remained unclear. Here we present the new North Greenland Eemian Ice Drilling ('NEEM') ice core and show only a modest ice-sheet response to the strong warming in the early Eemian. We reconstructed the Eemian record from folded ice using globally homogeneous parameters known from dated Greenland and Antarctic ice-core records. On the basis of water stable isotopes, NEEM surface temperatures after the onset of the Eemian (126,000 years ago) peaked at 8 +/- 4 degrees Celsius above the mean of the past millennium, followed by a gradual cooling that was probably driven by the decreasing summer insolation. Between 128,000 and 122,000 years ago, the thickness of the northwest Greenland ice sheet decreased by 400 +/- 250 metres, reaching surface elevations 122,000 years ago of 130 +/- 300 metres lower than the present. Extensive surface melt occurred at the NEEM site during the Eemian, a phenomenon witnessed when melt layers formed again at NEEM during the exceptional heat of July 2012. With additional warming, surface melt might become more common in the future.
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