Arctic has not been as warm as today in over 7,500 years, study says

Unprecedented levels of human-caused climate change have brought summer temperatures to a seven-thousand-year high, according to a new study.

GENEVA—The Arctic has never been as warm in the last 7,500 years as it is today, a study published on Thursday in the journal Nature Communications declared.

The scientists used an analysis of the annual growth rings of trees going back to the year 5618 BC to “find the industrial-era warming to be unprecedented in rate and to have elevated the summer temperature to levels above those reconstructed for the past seven millennia.”

The reconstruction of the climate was possible because erosion on the Yamal Peninsula has unearthed ancient tree trunks, the annual rings of which can be used to read summer temperatures, which impact a tree’s growth.

More than 3,500 tree trunks have been exhumed in Siberia, with 1,425 of them analyzed in the study.