TY - JOUR

T1 - Modern temperatures in central-north Greenland warmest in past millennium

AU - Hoerhold, M.

AU - Muench, T.

AU - Weissbach, S.

AU - Kipfstuhl, S.

AU - Freitag, J.

AU - Sasgen, I.

AU - Lohmann, G.

AU - Vinther, B.

AU - Laepple, T.

PY - 2023/1/18

Y1 - 2023/1/18

N2 - The Greenland Ice Sheet has a central role in the global climate system owing to its size, radiative effects and freshwater storage, and as a potential tipping point(1). Weather stations show that the coastal regions are warming(2), but the imprint of global warming in the central part of the ice sheet is unclear, owing to missing long-term observations. Current ice-core-based temperature reconstructions(3-5) are ambiguous with respect to isolating global warming signatures from natural variability, because they are too noisy and do not include the most recent decades. By systematically redrilling ice cores, we created a high-quality reconstruction of central and north Greenland temperatures from ad 1000 until 2011. Here we show that the warming in the recent reconstructed decade exceeds the range of the pre-industrial temperature variability in the past millennium with virtual certainty (P < 0.001) and is on average 1.5 +/- 0.4 degrees Celsius (1 standard error) warmer than the twentieth century. Our findings suggest that these exceptional temperatures arise from the superposition of natural variability with a long-term warming trend, apparent since ad 1800. The disproportionate warming is accompanied by enhanced Greenland meltwater run-off, implying that anthropogenic influence has also arrived in central and north Greenland, which might further accelerate the overall Greenland mass loss.

AB - The Greenland Ice Sheet has a central role in the global climate system owing to its size, radiative effects and freshwater storage, and as a potential tipping point(1). Weather stations show that the coastal regions are warming(2), but the imprint of global warming in the central part of the ice sheet is unclear, owing to missing long-term observations. Current ice-core-based temperature reconstructions(3-5) are ambiguous with respect to isolating global warming signatures from natural variability, because they are too noisy and do not include the most recent decades. By systematically redrilling ice cores, we created a high-quality reconstruction of central and north Greenland temperatures from ad 1000 until 2011. Here we show that the warming in the recent reconstructed decade exceeds the range of the pre-industrial temperature variability in the past millennium with virtual certainty (P < 0.001) and is on average 1.5 +/- 0.4 degrees Celsius (1 standard error) warmer than the twentieth century. Our findings suggest that these exceptional temperatures arise from the superposition of natural variability with a long-term warming trend, apparent since ad 1800. The disproportionate warming is accompanied by enhanced Greenland meltwater run-off, implying that anthropogenic influence has also arrived in central and north Greenland, which might further accelerate the overall Greenland mass loss.

KW - ICE-SHEET

KW - CLIMATE VARIABILITY

KW - WATER ISOTOPES

KW - STABLE-ISOTOPES

KW - FIRN

KW - PRECIPITATION

KW - OXYGEN

KW - MELT

KW - RECONSTRUCTIONS

KW - DENSIFICATION

U2 - 10.1038/s41586-022-05517-z

DO - 10.1038/s41586-022-05517-z

M3 - Journal article

C2 - 36653569

VL - 613

SP - 503

EP - 507

JO - Nature

JF - Nature

SN - 0028-0836

IS - 7944

ER -