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People have been observing the weather for thousands of years. However, the Antarctic ice cap is over a million.
An international team of scientists has unearthed a 1.74-mile-long (2.8-kilometer) ice core in Antarctica, hitting the bedrock of the frozen continent. The core provides a chronological record of Earth’s climate and atmosphere, with the oldest ice dating back 1.2 million years, if not more. Achievement, declared a statement The “Beyond EPICA – Oldest Ice” project is expected to provide insight into one of climate science’s most enduring questions.
It’s worth clarifying that this record does not make it the oldest ice core ever mined – that recognition 2.7 million year old ice core It was restored in 2017. What makes the Beyond EPICA core special is its continuous, high-resolution climate record spanning 1.2 million years, providing important insights into ancient atmospheric conditions and ice ages.
“We have marked a historic moment for climate and environmental science,” said Beyond EPICA coordinator Carlo Barbante of Ca’ Foscari University in Venice. The core was obtained during the project’s fourth Antarctic campaign. “This is the longest continuous record of our climate past the ice core, and it may reveal the relationship between the carbon cycle and our planet’s temperature.”
Between 900,000 and 1.2 million years ago, glacial periods varied from 41,000 to 100,000 years—a change known as the Middle Pleistocene Transition. The Beyond EPICA project aims to better understand this ancient climate phenomenon.
Led by the Institute of Polar Sciences of the Italian National Research Council (ISP-CNR), scientists spent more than 200 days drilling and processing an ice core in a remote area called Little Dome C in East Antarctica. average summer temperature is -31 degrees Fahrenheit (-35 degrees Celsius).
“From preliminary analysis of Small Dome C, we have a strong indication that the uppermost 2,480 meters (1.54 miles) contain a climate record stretching back 1.2 million years in the high-resolution record, where it is compressed to 13,000 years. meters of ice,” said Julien Westhoff, a postdoc at the University of Copenhagen and a senior scientist in the field. For the EPICA project.
The deepest and oldest parts of the core closest to the bedrock consist of ancient ice that is “heavily deformed, possibly mixed or refrozen, and of unknown origin,” as well as rocks from the bedrock itself. This section allows scientists to understand the refrozen ice beneath the Antarctic ice sheet, the glaciation history of this Antarctic region, and the last time the continent was ice-free.
The project still faces significant hurdles, particularly the logistical challenge of transporting the segmented ice cores to the lab without the risk of melting.
Gianluca Bianchi Fasani, head of the Italian National Agency, said: “Precious ice cores extracted during this campaign will be transported back to Europe on the Laura Bassi icebreaker, maintaining a cold chain of -50 ° C (-58 degrees F). Logistics of New Technologies, Energy and Sustainable Economic Development (ENEA) for beyond EPICA. “To achieve this goal, a strategy has been developed that includes the design of special cold containers and the precise scheduling of air and sea assets of the National Antarctic Research Program (PNRA).”
Once the segmented ice core finds its way to the (very cold) lab, it remains to be seen what secrets researchers will uncover within the ancient climate record.
