Melting World’s Oldest Ice
UK scientists will melt world’s oldest ice after it arrived at a research station in the UK. The ancient ice was taken by UK scientists in the deep ocean of East Antarctica. The ancient ice is around 1.2 million years. The scientists will focus on historical temperature changes and greenhouse gas levels to better predict future climate change.
In the next few weeks, scientists at Cambridge University will start slowly melting the world’s oldest ice at their science lab. The scientists are not interested in the ice itself, but rather what’s trapped within it. For example, they will focus on studying ancient dust, volcanic ash, and even tiny marine algae that were frozen inside when the ice formed. Scientists are excited about these materials because they will help them better understand wind patterns, temperature, and sea levels from more than a million years ago.
The ice was extracted by an international team of scientists. Scientists store the ancient ice inside frozen caves. The ice sheet from which the sample was gathered is a 1.7 mile long piece of ice–the same length as 26 and a half of professional football pitches. The sample of ice was shipped from Antarctica to several countries in Europe including the UK, Germany, and Switzerland. The ice is preserved at temperatures of -35C. The scientists carried the ice very carefully through out the journey.
Dr. Liz Thomas, head of ice core research at the British Antarctic Survey explained: “ This is a completely unknown period of our Earth’s history, “Our climate system has been through so many different changes that we really need to be able to go back in time to understand these different
processes and different tipping points.” Scientists believe that studying the world’s oldest ice can provide important information about Earth’s past, and improve our understanding of climate change. That way we can know how to the change weather in the future.
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