Latest Ice core Stories
A better understanding of climate variations at planetary scale is one of climate scientists' crucial concerns. Stable water isotope analysis, the chemistry of ice cores taken from the Arctic and Antarctic polar ice caps and of air bubbles trapped in them now allow a chronology to be drawn up of the climate changes that took place over the past 800 000 years. However, those data, collected at extreme latitudes, are not enough for understanding climatic interactions operating at the scale of...
Predicting climate change depends on many factors not properly included in current forecasting models, such as how the major polar ice caps will move in the event of melting around their edges. This in turn requires greater understanding of the processes at work when ice is under stress, influencing how it flows and moves. The immediate objective is to model the flow of ice sheets and glaciers more accurately, leading in turn to better future predictions of global ice cover for use in climate...
A team of Penn State scientists has discovered a new ultra-small species of bacteria that has survived for more than 120,000 years within the ice of a Greenland glacier at a depth of nearly two miles. The microorganism's ability to persist in this low-temperature, high-pressure, reduced-oxygen, and nutrient-poor habitat makes it particularly useful for studying how life, in general, can survive in a variety of extreme environments on Earth and possibly elsewhere in the solar system. The work...
Computer analyses of global climate have consistently overstated warming in Antarctica, concludes new research by scientists at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) and Ohio State University. The study can help scientists improve computer models and determine if Earth's southernmost continent will warm significantly this century, a major research question because of Antarctica's potential impact on global sea-level rise."We can now compare computer simulations with...
The state of Alaska has the dubious distinction of leading the lower 48 in the effects of a warming climate. Small villages are slipping into the sea due to coastal erosion, soggy permafrost is cracking buildings and trapping trucks.In an effort to better understand how the Pacific Northwest fits into the larger climate-change picture, scientists from the University of New Hampshire and University of Maine are heading to Denali National Park on the second leg of a multi-year mission to...
Recent additions to the premier collection of Southern Ocean sediment cores at Florida State University's Antarctic Marine Geology Research Facility will give international scientists a close-up look at fluctuations that occurred in Antarctica's ice sheet and marine and terrestrial life as the climate cooled considerably between 20 and 14 million years ago.FSU's latest Antarctic sediment core acquisition was extracted from deep beneath the sea floor of Antarctica's western Ross Sea, the...
New insights into natural changes in atmospheric methane concentrationsIce cores are essential for climate research, because they represent the only archive which allows direct measurements of atmospheric composition and greenhouse gas concentrations in the past. Using novel isotopic studies, scientists from the European Project for Ice Coring In Antarctica (EPICA) were now able to identify the most important processes responsible for changes in natural methane concentrations over the...
Each year, long-distance winds drop up to 900 million tons of dust from deserts and other parts of the land into the oceans. Scientists suspect this phenomenon connects to global climate - but exactly how, remains a question. Now a big piece of the puzzle has fallen into place, with a study showing that the amount of dust entering the equatorial Pacific peaks sharply during repeated ice ages, then declines when climate warms. The researchers say it cements the theory that atmospheric...
DURHAM, N.H. - After enduring months on the coldest, driest, and windiest continent on Earth, researchers today closed out the inaugural season on an unprecedented, multi-year effort to retrieve the most detailed record of greenhouse gases in Earth's atmosphere over the last 100,000 years.Working as part of the National Science Foundation's West Antarctic Ice Sheet Divide (WAIS Divide) Ice Core Project, a team of scientists, engineers, technicians, and students from multiple U.S. institutions...
Researchers from the University of Delaware and the University of California at Riverside have thawed ice estimated to be at least a million years old from above Lake Vostok, an ancient lake that lies hidden more than two miles beneath the frozen surface of Antarctica. The scientists will now examine the eons-old water for microorganisms, and then through novel genomic techniques, try to figure out how these tiny, living "time capsules" survived the ages in total darkness, in freezing cold...
