If the radiocarbon dating is accurate, a new study on the Canadian Arctic is showing the highest temperatures in at least 44,000 years, if not 120,000.

We are definitely feeling the effects of the increases in chemical usage and environmental pollution over the last 100 years, especially the rapid increase since the 1970s. During that same time period and at the same rates, temperatures all over the Arctic have been increasing. If the radiocarbon dating is accurate, a new study on the Canadian Arctic shows the highest temperatures of any century in at least 44,000 years, if not 120,000.

As part of this study, University of Colorado-Boulder researchers analyzed gas bubbles captured in ice cores that expose the layers of snow that have accumulated as time has gone by. This helped them recreate historic temperature and precipitation levels.

They also estimated moss samples gathered from melting ice on Canada’s Baffin Island were covered by the ice for at least 44,000 years using radiocarbon dating.

The study’s lead author, Professor Gifford Miller, explained, “This study really says the warming we are seeing is outside any kind of known natural variability, and it has to be due to increased greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.”

He warns that all the data indicates that the island’s ice caps will all disappear even if temperatures don’t get any warmer.