Ancient Antarctic ice arrives in the UK
Some of the oldest ice ever recovered from Antarctica has arrived in the UK for climate analysis, more than a million years after it captured some of the Earth's atmosphere at the time.
The ice core, drilled from a depth of 2,800 metres in the East Antarctic Peninsula, is expected to hold a climate record stretching back over 1.5 million years, nearly doubling the current 800,000-year ice core record.
"So this is a really exciting project to work on because we really are exploring a completely unknown time in our history and what we're hoping is we're going to unlock all these amazing secrets," Dr Liz Thomas, Head of the Ice Cores team at the British Antarctic Survey in Cambridge, said.
The ice core, drilled by the 'Beyond EPICA – Oldest Ice' project team, will undergo meticulous analysis over the coming years at BAS and other European laboratories.
Scientists aim to unlock insights into Earth’s climate evolution, focusing on greenhouse gas concentrations, atmospheric temperatures, wind patterns, and sea ice extent.
A key objective is to understand why Earth’s glacial-interglacial cycles shifted from 41,000 to 100,000 years around one million years ago, providing context for predicting future climate responses to rising greenhouse gas levels.
Ice cores capture direct evidence of past atmospheric conditions through trapped air bubbles, which will be analysed as they are released from the ice as it is slowly melted in a process called Continuous Flow Analysis.
The findings will offer the first continuous environmental reconstructions spanning 1.5 million years, shedding light on the link between atmospheric CO2 and climate during a previously uncharted period.
Funded by the European Commission, Beyond EPICA involves 12 institutions across 10 European countries.
BAS leads the analysis of impurities using continuous flow techniques to measure chemical elements, particles, and isotopic data.
