Locating the 'oldest ice' in Antarctica

[Judi Lynn]

An ambitious project to retrieve a continuous record of Earth's atmosphere and climate stretching back 1.5 million years is officially "go". A European consortium will head to Antarctica later this year to begin the process of drilling deep into the continent's eastern ice sheet. The group's aim is to pull up a frozen core of material almost 3km long. The choice of location - at "Little Dome C" - followed three years of survey work, which included building a radar map of the bedrock under the ice.

1h ago

More:
https://www.bbc.com/news/av/science-environment-47862184/locating-the-oldest-ice-in-antarctica?intlink_from_url=&link_location=live-reporting-map

[Judi Lynn]

1. Climate change: European team to drill for 'oldest ice' in Antarctica

By Jonathan Amos
BBC Science Correspondent, Vienna
1 hour ago



An ambitious project to retrieve a continuous record of Earth's atmosphere and climate stretching back 1.5 million years is officially "go".

A European consortium will head to Antarctica in December to begin the process of drilling deep into the continent's eastern ice sheet.

The group's aim is to pull up a frozen core of material almost 3km long.

Scientists hope this can lead them to an explanation for why Earth's ice ages flipped in frequency in the deep past.

Although it might seem at first glance to be a rather esoteric quest, researchers say it bears down directly on the question of how much the world is likely to warm in the centuries ahead.

More:
https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-47848344