Arctic will become 'more of a Mediterranean than a frozen border' - The Ecologist

[Arctic expert Charles Emmerson] More recently, one of the classic mysteries of Arctic history is the extent to which it was a relatively warm period which allowed for European settlement of Greenland, a thousand-odd years ago, and the extent to which a much colder period may have been responsible for killing off that population.
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Has the Arctic been relatively ice free at points in the past? Yes. But it doesn’t follow from that that the climate change currently being experienced in the Arctic – much faster than elsewhere in the world – is somehow just a natural variation, or nothing to worry about...You’re going to have to start looking at polar-centred maps of the world, with the Arctic Ocean as what it may eventually become – more of a Mediterranean than a frozen border.