(Phys.org)—An international team of researchers has examined ice cores taken from an island in northern Canada in the 1980s and found that air temperatures during the Holocene were higher than today. Further, there have been unprecedented air temperature changes in the area over the past half-century. In their paper published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the group describes their study of the cores and why they believe it may help better understand what might happen to our planet due to global warming.