Jan. 9 () –
Scientists from the Beyond EPICA-Oldest Ice project announced that they have successfully drilled a 2,800-meter-long ice core, reaching the bedrock beneath the Antarctic ice sheet.
These ice samples are expected to reveal, for the first time, critical details about Earth’s climate and atmospheric history, extending beyond 800,000 years ago and They show a continuous record of the history of our climate dating back 1.2 million years, and probably longer.
Coordinated by the Institute of Polar Sciences of the Italian National Research Council (Cnr-Isp), the project aims to solve one of the most complex mysteries in climate science.
This scientific milestone was achieved at the remote Little Dome C site in Antarctica, at an altitude of 3,200 meters above sea level and with an average summer temperature of -35 °Cby a research team representing twelve scientific institutions from ten European nations.
The extracted ice preserves an unprecedented record of Earth’s climate history, continuous information on atmospheric temperatures, and pristine samples of ancient greenhouse gas air spanning more than 1.2 million years of ice and probably longer.
“We have marked a historic moment for climate and environmental science,” he comments. in a statement Carlo Barbante, professor at the Ca’ Foscari University of Venice, senior associate member of the Institute of Polar Sciences of the Italian National Research Council (Cnr-Isp) and coordinator of Beyond EPICA. “This is the longest continuous record of our past climate from an ice core, and may reveal the interrelationship between the carbon cycle and our planet’s temperature.
UP TO 13,000 YEARS ARE COMPRESSED IN A METER OF ICE
“From preliminary analyzes recorded at Little Dome C, we have a strong indication that the upper 2,480 meters contain a climate record dating back 1.2 million years in a high-resolution record where up to 13,000 years are compressed into one meter of ice“reports Julien Westhoff, chief scientist in the field, postdoc at the University of Copenhagen.
Lead field researcher Frank Wilhelms, associate professor at the University of Göttingen and the Alfred Wegener Institute, adds: “The correct location was identified using cutting-edge radio echosounder technologies and ice flow modeling. Surprisingly, we found the record ranging from 0.8 to 1.2 million years ago, exactly where it was predicted to be, in the depth range between 2,426 and 2,490 meters, expanding our previous twenty-year-old EPICA ice core record.”
Beneath the ice that houses the climate record for more than 1.2 million years, the lowest 210 meters of the ice core above the bedrock consists of ancient ice that is highly deformed, possibly mixed or refrozen, and of unknown origin. . Advanced analysis could help test previous theories about the behavior of refrozen ice beneath the Antarctic Ice Sheet and reveal the history of East Antarctica’s glaciation.
The Beyond EPICA ice core will offer unprecedented information about the Middle Pleistocene Transition, a notable period between 900,000 and 1.2 million years ago, when glacial cycles slowed from intervals of 41,000 years to 100,000 years. The reasons behind this change remain one of the most enduring mysteries in climate science.which this project aims to unravel.
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