An international team of scientists in the Antarctic has successfully extracted what is believed to be the world’s oldest ice—a historic milestone for climate science.
They drilled down almost two miles to extract 2.8-km of ice core, reaching the actual bedrock beneath the Antarctic ice sheet.
The air bubbles trapped inside the ice are “like tiny time capsules of Earth’s atmospheric past”. The samples equate to a continuous record of climate history dating back to 1.2 million years ago, which could illuminate the mysteries of glacial climate cycles.
This was the fourth Antarctic field mission for the Europeans behind the ‘Beyond EPICA – Oldest Ice’ project, funded by the European Commission.
They achieved more than 200 days of successful drilling and ice core processing operations across four seasons in the harsh environment of the central Antarctic plateau, working at an altitude of 3,200 meters above sea level with an average summer temperature of -35°C.
The ice core from Beyond EPICA will offer unprecedented insights into the Mid-Pleistocene Transition, a remarkable period between 900,000 and 1.2 million years ago when glacial cycles slowed down from 41,000-years to 100,000-year intervals.
The reasons behind this shift remain one of climate science’s enduring mysteries, one which this project seeks to unravel.
“We have marked a historic moment for climate and environmental science,” said Carlo Barbante, Coordinator of Beyond EPICA and professor at Ca’ Foscari University of Venice, a member of the Institute of Polar Sciences of the National Research Council of Italy (Cnr-Isp).
“This is the longest continuous record of our past climate from an ice core, and it can reveal the interlink between the carbon cycle and temperature of our planet.”
The team speculated that even older ice—dating back 2.58 million years ago—may be discovered within the core’s base.
Watch a cool video about their operations…
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