First analyses of the longest sediment core ever collected on land in the terrestrial Arctic provide documentation that intense warm intervals, warmer than scientists thought possible, occurred there over the past 2.8 million years
Further, these extreme warm periods correspond closely with times when parts of Antarctica were ice-free and also warm, suggesting strong inter-hemispheric climate connectivity. “The polar regions are much more vulnerable to change than we thought before,” say the project’s Co-Chief scientists Martin Melles of the University of Cologne, Germany, Julie Brigham-Grette of the University of Massachusetts Amherst, USA, and Pavel Minyuk of Russia’s North-East Interdisciplinary Scientific Research Institute in Magadan.
The data reported come from analyzing sediment cores collected in 2009 from under ice-covered Lake El’gygytgyn in the northeast Russian Arctic. “Lake E” was formed 3.6 million years ago when a huge meteorite hit the Earth and blasted out an 11-mile (18 km) wide crater. It has been collecting layers of sediment ever since. Moreover, the meteorite luckily hit one of the few areas in the Arctic not eroded by continental glaciers, leaving the thick sediment record remarkably undisturbed and continuous. Consequently, cores from Lake E reach back in geologic time nearly 30 times farther than Greenland ice cores covering the past 110,000 years.
The sediment cores from Lake El´gygytgyn reflect the climatic and environmental history of the Arctic with great sensitivity. The physical, chemical and biological properties of the sediments match the glacial/interglacial pattern known globally for the ice ages. However, it is conspicuous that some warm phases are exceptional, marked by extraordinary high biological activity in the lake, well above the background of rather regular climate cycles.
In order to quantify the climate differences associated with the variable interglacial intensities, four warm phases were investigated in detail: the two youngest, “normal” interglacials, since 12,000 years and about 125,000 years ago, and two of the “super” interglacials, about 400,000 and about 1.1 million years ago. According to pollen-based climate reconstructions, summer temperatures and annual precipitation during the super interglacials were about 4 to 5 degrees C warmer and about 12 inches (300 mm) wetter than during normal interglacials. The super interglacial climates suggest that it’s virtually impossible for the Greenland’s ice sheet to have existed in its present form at those times.
Sounds a lot like there have been naturally occurring substantially warmer periods than currently predicted for CO2, and these “climate scientists” have no idea how or why they occurred. By implication, they can’t model a history they know existed using the narrow and erroneous set of parameters they’re using. Maybe they need to scrap they current models and try some that might work?