Baffin Island reveals dramatic scale of Arctic climate change

Study delves back into 200,000 years of history to demonstrate the devastating impact of global warming

A frozen lake on a remote island off Canada’s northern coast has yielded remarkable insights into how the Arctic climate has changed dramatically over 50 years.

Muddy sediment from the bottom of the lake, some of it 200,000 years old, shows that Baffin Island, one of the most inhospitable places on Earth, has undergone an unprecedented warming over the past half-century. Scientists believe the temperature rise is probably due to human-induced warming. It has more than offset a natural cooling trend which began 8,000 years ago.

Instead of cooling at a rate of minus 0.2C every 1,000 years