The Natural Cycle of Climate Change

Ancient Greenland was green. New Danish research has shown that it was covered in conifer forest and, like southern Sweden today, had a relatively mild climate. Eske Willerslev, a professor at Copenhagen University, has analyzed the world's oldest DNA, preserved under the kilometer-thick icecap. The DNA is likely close to half a million years old, and the research is painting a picture which is overturning all previous assumptions about biological life and the climate in Greenland. The results have just been published in the prestigious scientific journal Science.

Ten percent of the Earth's surface has been covered with ice for thousands of years. No one knows what lies beneath the kilometer-deep icecaps. These are the Earth's unknown and unexplored regions. But some have begun the exploration. Several projects under Danish leadership have been drilling through the icecap on Greenland, and collected complete columns of ice all the way from the top to the bottom. The ice has annual layers and is a frozen archive of the world's climate."I wonder, if there could also be DNA down there", thought Eske Willerslev, who is the world's leading expert in extracting DNA from organisms buried in permafrost. His thinking was that perhaps he could reconstruct the environment of the past.
Ice-core samples of ancient sediment

The icecap itself is comprised of pure ice, but the lower sections are mixed with mud from the bottom, and it was this mud that Eske Willerslev wanted to research.

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Global warming spurring ocean waves' speed

Global warming is speeding up ocean waves, a new study by Canadian researchers from the University of Victoria in British Columbia, has found.Geophysicists predict that as the ocean surface warms, these so-called planetary waves should speed up.To test this theory, John Fyfe and Oleg Saenko modelled the changes to ocean wave patterns over the 20th and 21st centuries.They found that gigantic ocean waves, spanning hundreds of kilometres from crest to crest, had speeded as a result of global warming."We were really surprised at how quickly the ocean responded to temperature change," said Fyfe.The model further showed that by the end of the 21st century, the waves would be a further 20 to 40 per cent faster compared with pre-industrial speeds."We knew we'd see an effect, but we didn't think it would be significant for at least another two centuries," said Fyfe, adding that the faster planetary waves will have an effect on global weather.The study appears in the journal Geophysical Research Letters, reports New Scientist.