A team of scientists has successfully drilled into Antarctica, pulling up a massive ice core sample that spans 1.2 million years. The 1.7-mile-long ice core is the longest continuous record of Earth’s past climate from an ice core, offering new insights into the evolution of our planet’s atmosphere and climate.
The drilling process took four summers, with temperatures averaging -25.6 degrees Fahrenheit at a site near Concordia Research Station. To transport the sample, it was broken down into pieces and loaded onto an icebreaker ship called Laura Bassi for transport to Europe.
At the destination, the ice core will be kept in specialized cold containers at -58 degrees Fahrenheit, allowing researchers to reassemble the samples once they arrive. The team is particularly interested in studying how levels of greenhouse gases have changed over millennia, which can help inform predictions about future climate changes.
In comparison, their previous efforts extracted an 800,000-year-old ice core from Antarctica, while other teams have collected samples dating back 2.7 million years. However, these earlier samples were not as long continuous as the new record-breaking ice core. The team’s goal was to reach older, more pristine ice that would provide a better understanding of Earth’s past climate.
The discovery is significant because ice cores are crucial tools for studying how the planet’s climate has changed over time. As snowflakes fall in polar regions, they capture chemicals and particles from the air, which build up year after year to form layers of ice. These layers provide valuable information about past climate conditions, including chemical signatures and air bubbles that date back millions of years.
By analyzing these layers, scientists can gain insights into historical greenhouse gas levels, volcanic eruptions, and even the tiny bubbles of air our ancestors breathed a million years ago. The new ice core is expected to shed light on these topics and help researchers better understand Earth’s climate history, ultimately informing predictions about future climate changes.
Source: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/scientists-drill-17-miles-into-antarctic-ice-revealing-12-million-years-of-climate-history-180985809