A group of scientists from the Center for the Study of the Oldest Ice (COLDEX) is engaged in research on Antarctic ice to look back millions of years and learn about long-term climate changes that have occurred on Earth, as well as to make climate forecasts.
Such information can be obtained from ice cores – columns of ice extracted from wells. One of the participants of the December expedition recorded on video a journey into the icy past of Antarctica, plunging the camera into a drilled hole more than 90 meters deep.
The specimens collected are estimated to be over 2,000,000 years old.
What were the atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases at that time can be found out by examining air bubbles frozen in ice. The reaction of ice sheets to different climatic conditions is also being studied.
By analyzing data from radar and GPS satellites, scientists are looking for areas where the oldest ice samples may be hiding. But, according to them, it’s like looking for a needle in a haystack – after all, the area of u200bu200bthe East Antarctic ice sheet is huge.