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  • RESEARCH HIGHLIGHT

An ice core from cold-war days reveals Greenland’s green and balmy past

The island lived up to its name one million years ago, when the ice sheet of today was missing.
CRREL engineers recover the Camp Century ice core c. 1966

An ice core (above) drilled in 1966 has revealed that the ice sheet covering Greenland melted away and was restored at least once in the last million years. Credit: ERDC Cold Regions Research and Engineering Laboratory

Long-frozen areas of Greenland were ice-free in warmer periods of the past — a potentially bad omen for the fate of the island’s massive ice sheet.

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Nature 591, 505 (2021)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-021-00679-8

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