Accurate climate models based in part on the data collected at NEEM could play an important role in helping human civilization adapt to a changing climate. During the Eemian period, for example, the Greenland ice sheet was much smaller, and global sea levels were about 15 feet higher than they are today, a height that would swamp many major cities around the world.

MSNBC

The new study, detailed in the Jan. 4 issue of The Journal of Organic Chemistry, reports the discovery of a new organic compound in amber called “quesnoin,” whose precursor exists only in sap produced by a tree currently growing only in Brazil’s Amazon rainforest. The researchers say the amber likely dripped from a similar tree that once covered France millions of years before the continents drifted into their current positions.