Fossilized pollen reveals climate history of northern Antarctica

PhysOrg ^ | June 27, 2011 | Rice University

[SunkenCiv]

A painstaking examination of the first direct and detailed climate record from the continental shelves surrounding Antarctica reveals that the last remnant of Antarctic vegetation existed in a tundra landscape on the continent's northern peninsula about 12 million years ago. The research, which was led by researchers at Rice University and Louisiana State University, appears online this week and will be featured on the cover of the July 12 issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences...

In the warmest period in Earth's past 55 million years, Antarctica was ice-free and forested. The continent's vast ice sheets, which today contain more than two-thirds of Earth's freshwater, began forming about 38 million years ago. The Antarctic Peninsula, which juts farther north than the rest of the continent, was the last part of Antarctica to succumb to ice. It's also the part that has experienced the most dramatic warming in recent decades; its mean annual temperatures rose as much as six times faster than mean annual temperatures worldwide.

[Ramius]

“Northern Antarctica”???

Is that some kind of joke?

[SunkenCiv]

Stand at the South Pole, and you’ll see nothin’ but land to the north. :’)