Unprecedented Arctic warming caused by greenhouse gases

Daily Mail : Temperatures in the Arctic may be the highest they’ve been for 120 000 years. According to a study published in Geophysical Research Letters, Gifford Miller of the University of Colorado Boulder and colleagues collected 145 dead tundra plants, long preserved in the ice on Baffin Island in the eastern Canadian Arctic. Using radiocarbon dating, the researchers found that the plants had been frozen for at least 44 000 years and possibly as long as 120 000 years. By looking so far back in time, they have been able to compare how recent Arctic warming, as measured over the past century, relates to long-term natural climate variability. What they found was that “although the Arctic has been warming since about 1900, the most significant warming in the Baffin Island region didn’t really start until the 1970s,” said Miller. They conclude that the unprecedented warming is being caused by anthropogenic greenhouse gases.