Scientists have extracted a 2.8km-long ice core from Antarctica, dating back an astonishing 1.2 million years, in a bid to solve the mystery of Earth’s climate history. The European team worked tirelessly over four Antarctic summers to reach the rock under the frozen continent and has successfully extracted ancient air bubbles that could provide crucial insights into our planet’s past.
The ice core, suspended inside the icy cylinder, is believed to hold secrets about glacial cycles disrupted 900,000-1.2 million years ago when human ancestors came close to extinction. The team, led by Prof Carlo Barbante at Ca’ Foscari University of Venice, hopes that the data from this ancient ice will help unravel one of the major mysteries in our planet’s climate history.
The extracted core is not only significant but also longer than eight Eiffel Towers end-to-end, measuring 2.8km long and weighing over 10 tons. The team worked at temperatures of -35C using specialized equipment to drill through the ice sheet and extract a piece of history that is believed to be one million years old.
The findings from this project could provide an additional 400,000 years of climate history, surpassing existing data from other ice cores such as Epica. The team is now analyzing the core’s contents, which include trapped air bubbles and particles, to understand how greenhouse gas emissions and temperature variations have altered over time.
According to Prof Barbante, understanding the past is crucial for predicting the future. “There is a lot of the past in our future,” he says. The extracted ice core will be transported to European institutions where scientists will begin their analysis, hoping to uncover answers to some of Earth’s most enduring climate mysteries.
Source: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cwypyg4vq8ko