at high altitudes Greenland ice sheet the first decade of the 21st century was the warmest seen so far in about 1,000 years. From 2001 to 2011, the average temperature was 1.5 degrees Celsius above the 20th century average. This is reported by a team led by Maria Hörhold from the Alfred Wegener Institute (AWI). This means that global warming is also detectable in one of the most remote regions in the world, the group said in the journal Nature.
She examined ice cores collected in northern and central Greenland. Using the stable isotopes of water, scientists can see how high air temperatures were in the past. As the evaluated time series goes back only to the year 1000, the researchers do not make statements about the period before that. Scientists last examined ice cores from Greenland until 1995. “You hadn’t seen any warming at that time – in contrast to the global temperature increase,” Hörhold said.