Greenland's Prudhoe Dome Melted Completely 7,000 Years Ago

Ice cores drilled from Prudhoe Dome, a high-elevation anchor point of the Greenland ice sheet, show the formation completely melted approximately 7,000 years ago during a moderate natural warming period. The finding overturns prior assumptions about the dome's long-term stability and suggests the broader Greenland ice sheet is significantly more vulnerable to temperature increases than scientific models had treated it. Prudhoe Dome was considered one of the more resilient regions of the sheet precisely because of its elevation, making the evidence of total melt particularly consequential for projections. The mechanism is direct: if a relatively mild natural warming cycle was sufficient to eliminate this formation, current anthropogenic warming, which is accelerating faster than the pace of that earlier period, presents a plausible pathway to comparable or greater ice loss. Sea level rise is the primary downstream risk, as Greenland holds enough ice to raise global sea levels by several meters if substantially destabilized. Researchers and policymakers tracking coastal infrastructure exposure and climate liability will need to revise risk timelines accordingly.