Ancient mummified forest emerges from the Canadian Arctic (Wired UK)

"These trees lived at a particularly rough time in the Arctic," Barker explains. "Ellesmere Island was quickly changing from a warm deciduous forest environment to an evergreen environment, on its way to the barren scrub we see today. The trees would have had to endure half of the year in darkness and in a cooling climate."

While the trees died in a time of global cooling, they've woken up on the opposite end of the climate spectrum. Their presence isn't helping matters, either: as the wood rots, it releases methane and carbon dioxide into the atmosphere -- greenhouse gases which will both enhance the effects of climate change.

Ohio State team member David Elliot clarified that the effects of this single deposit are trivial compared to the what you'd produce when driving a car, but in context of the whole Arctic it could be a significant issue. With more glaciers melting (the Ellesmere Ice Shelf reduced in size by 90 percent in the 20th century due to climate change), the thought of more mummified woods appearing and releasing carbon dioxide into the air is a worrying one.