Scientists have successfully extracted the world’s oldest ice core at Little Dome C in East Antarctica. Extracted during the fourth drilling campaign of the Beyond EPICA-Oldest Ice project, funded by the EU, the team members drilled 2800 metres into the ice until they hit bedrock below, before returning the sample. Over the next few years, these samples will be meticulously analysed at laboratories across Europe, including at the British Antarctic Survey (BAS), revealing a climate and atmospheric record stretching back more than 1.5 million years.
The project is driven by a central scientific question: “Why did the planet’s climate cycle shift roughly 1 million years ago from a 41,000-year to a 100,000-year phasing of glacial-interglacial cycles?”asks Liz Thomas, paleoclimatologist and head of the ice cores team at BAS. By extending the ice core record beyond this turning point, researchers hope to unlock the details about the shift in our planet’s past climate record and improve their predictions of how Earth’s climate may respond to future greenhouse gas increases.
Topics:
- Antarctica /
- climate /
- ice
