Melting in Part of Antarctica Unprecedented in 1,000 Years

An ice core drilled on James Ross Island off the Antarctic Peninsula reveals that melting in the summer has accelerated dramatically there since the mid-20th century. (Image: NASA) On a clear day in April of last year, NASA's Terra satellite captured this image of the glacier-etched arc of the Antarctic Peninsula. Just shy of the peninsula's very tip is James Ross Island — from where some important new findings about climate change have just come. This part of Antarctica has been warming dramatically in recent years. And now, an ice core drilled on James Ross Island has revealed that summer melting is "at a level that is unprecedented over the past 1,000 years," researchers report in the journal Nature Geoscience. To arrive at their conclusions, the researchers identified visible melt layers in the ice core going back a thousand years. They also reconstructed temperature changes by analyzing chemical fingerprints in ...