Scientists have successfully extracted the world’s oldest ice, possibly 1.2 million years old, from the depths of Antarctica. Working in extreme conditions of -35 degrees Celsius, the team dug up a 2.8 km long ice core, which contained ancient air bubbles that could provide valuable insights into the Earth’s climate history. After four summers of intensive work, the international team, racing against seven other countries, reached the reef beneath the Antarctic ice sheet to retrieve the 9,186-foot-long specimen.
The core is a “time machine” that records “an extraordinary archive of Earth’s climate,” said Carlo Barbante, coordinator of Beyond EPICA, or the European Project for Ice Coring in Antarctica — the team that collected the core.
Currently, the core has been cut into 1 meter (3.2 ft) pieces so that it can be studied. Claimed to be the oldest drilled ice on Earth, the core may hold answers to important mysteries surrounding the evolution of the planet’s climate.
“Air bubbles trapped within ice cores provide a direct snapshot of past atmospheric composition, including greenhouse gas concentrations such as carbon dioxide and methane,” Mr. Barbante said via email to CNN.
“By analyzing these, we can reconstruct how Earth’s climate responded to changes in climate factors such as solar radiation, volcanic activity and orbital variations. This data allows us to understand the complex relationship between hundreds of thousands of greenhouse gases and global temperatures. years and now down to 1.2 million (years) and hopefully beyond,” he said.
Scientists also hope the ice will help them understand why the chronology of Earth’s ice ages suddenly changed about a million years ago. A recent study suggests that this event almost caused the extinction of ancient human ancestors.
The core was discovered by researchers as part of the fourth expedition of Beyond EPICA – the oldest ice project funded by the European Commission. This campaign was conducted between mid-November and mid-January. Over the past four summers, experts from 12 European scientific institutions have spent more than 200 days drilling and processing the ice.
The effort is a continuation of a 1996 program in which scientists explored the relationship between atmospheric greenhouse gas emissions and climate over the past 800,000 years.
