Arctic Azolla Event
One of the most remarkable discoveries about azolla came in 2004. A scientific expedition to the North Pole showed that this remarkable plant had a massive effect on the Earth’s climate 50 million years ago.
Reduced ice cover allowed the Arctic Coring Expedition (ACEX ) drillship Vidar Viking to sail close to the North Pole and drill a scientific borehole in sediments of the Lomonosov Ridge beneath the Arctic Ocean seabed.
ACEX was a great success. It cored sediments that recorded events stretching back to the age of the dinosaurs 80 million years ago. This was a world with a greenhouse climate that had much warmer global temperatures than those of today, when turtles and alligators inhabiting lush forests a few hundred miles from the North Pole.
The greenhouse climate ended 50 million years ago when levels of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide (CO2) suddenly fell. This resulted in an abrupt temperature fall and shift in the Earth’s climate from a greenhouse world , with its warm global temperatures, to our present icehouse climate with its permanent ice and snow at both poles.
