Ancient ice from Antarctica set to reveal secrets from 1.5m years ago | World | News
Ice stalactites hang in the corner of the -25C laboratory, where scientists are preparing to solve the secrets of the oldest ice core collected from Antarctica. The valuable bars up to the age of 1.5 million are sitting in the polystyrene cooling boxes under a glittering fan network that protects the precise temperature.
Last week, it took decades for the British Antarctica Research to come to the center of Cambridge. After carefully selected an area using radar analysis, Europe’s best ice engineers fell 2.8km to four summer to remove this continuous climate recording in 4.5m rods. The nuclei moved to Italy by land, air and sea, then to Germany, where it was more divided here.
Scientists in BAS will use their 190m shares to examine the chemical elements, particles and isotopes in the ice that moves like a time capsule that reveals the atmospheric composition thousands of years ago.
It is hoped that the study will help better understand natural processes that guide climate change and what will happen in the coming years.
Climate Scientist Liz Thomas explained: uz We know that people are currently affecting the climate, and there is climate change, but this will always be natural variability. We need to understand it to make sure that the forecasts that come into the future are better.
“Effectively a crystal ball. We have a chance to look again in time and see when the world is in this similar situation and understand how fast the works change. And ultimately we want to know what will happen as people.”
After years of radar and topography analysis to choose the perfect point, digging started in 2020 and lasted five years, closed during a season of pandemi.
Ice seed drilling engineer James Veale spent long hours in -40C conditions, wrapped with multiple layers, and ate much more calories than usual to stay hot.
Mr. Veale said: ün When we removed our next ice, we knew that we were approaching and approaching the oldest ice that would give us the information we need desperately. ”
The engineer said that the ice finally reached BAS’s laboratories and that it was “amazing” to make these difficult weeks “value”.
So, after removing the ancient ice, how do you discover your secrets? You melt. In the cold laboratory, the ice seeds will be fed to a melting device that produces a fixed water flow fed from a pipe to the next room.
The temperature is still cold, but it can be folded there, where the instrument and machinery banks expect to collect a rich data.
The personnel will work from 7 am to 22.00 am for seven weeks to complete data collection until October. Other analyzes will also look for microbes in the ice, including single -celled algae called marine diatomas.
Dr Thomas said: “The time we are really interested in this ice seed is returning to a time when we think that the ice layers are much smaller than they are now.
“This is a time when we can go back to history and potentially smaller ice layers when we can look, because it is warmer, so the sea levels would be higher. We can use this information to better understand how we will change in the future.”
The pressure is high. Dr Thomas added: “This is a shot, if we don’t get the information we need from it, we don’t have the option to return again.”
Scientists will spend months by interpreting the data and hoping to present their first findings towards the end of next year.
The oldest Ice Core project brought together researchers from 10 European countries and 12 institutions. 20 years ago, Epica Dome C is based on the previous extraction of the ice seed, which provides a continuous recording of 800,000 years ago.
Dominic Hodgson, the Deputy Science of BAS, said: “It has been the place where the story ended in the last 20 years.
