In the heart of Greenland, temperatures have never been so high for at least a millennium, with 1.5 degrees more than in the 20th century in the decade from 2001 to 2011 and global warming that has also reached the central part of the island .
This is indicated by the study published in the journal Nature and led by the German Alfred-Wegener Institute, which reconstructed the climatic history of Greenland from the year 1000 to 2011, thanks to ice cores of unprecedented length and quality.
The results surprised the researchers, who had not expected such a noticeable difference in temperature compared to the past, even in the most inland areas of the island.
The Greenland ice sheet, which rises up to 3,000 meters in altitude and is several kilometers thick, plays a fundamental role in the global climate system.
With huge quantities of water stored in the ice, equal to about 3 million cubic kilometers, the melting and the consequent rise in sea levels is considered a point of no return: if global emissions rates remain unchanged, in fact, it is expected that the ice sheet will raise the average level of the oceans by about 50 centimeters by 2100.
The researchers led by Maria Hörhold measured the concentrations of oxygen isotopes (atoms that have a nucleus composed of the same number of protons but a different number of neutrons) in ice cores, which vary with the prevailing temperatures at the time of ice formation.
The results highlighted how the warming has now also reached the heart of the island: "these data - says Hörhold - show that the warming in the period between 2001 and 2011 differs markedly from the natural variations observed in the last 1,000 years" .