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World’s oldest Antarctic ice sample used to study climate trends
A very old piece of ice from Antarctica has arrived at a lab in the UK, where scientists will melt it to unlock important information about Earth’s climate. The ice is around 1.2 million years old. It was taken from deep below the surface in East Antarctica earlier this year.
For the next seven weeks, researchers will carefully melt the ice to see what’s inside. They’re not just looking at the ice itself. They want to study the tiny things that have been trapped in it for over a million years. These include ancient dust, volcanic ash, and even tiny marine algae called diatoms that were frozen long ago. By looking at these ancient materials, scientists hope to learn more about what Earth’s climate, such as wind, temperature, and sea levels, were like in the past. This can help them understand how the planet’s weather and environment have changed over time. Dr Liz Thomas, who leads the ice research at the British Antarctic Survey, said, “This is a completely unknown period of Earth’s history, as there is no other place on Earth that retains such a long record of the past atmosphere as Antarctica. We need to go back in time to understand how the climate changed and what might happen in the future.”
The ice was collected by a team of scientists from 10 European countries, led by the Italian Institute of Polar Sciences. In freezing temperatures of -35 °C, drilled a huge ice core that was about 1.7 miles (2.7 kilometers) long. The glassy cylinder was drilled from deep inside the Antarctic ice sheet. Next, the ice was cut into smaller pieces and sent by ship, then driven in a special cold van to labs in Europe, including in the UK, Germany, and Switzerland.
One of the people involved in the collection process was engineer James Veale, who worked at the icy drilling site near Concordia Station in Antarctica, said, “Holding that ancient ice in my gloved hands was amazing. I had to be super careful not to drop it!”
Now, scientists are working hard to unlock the secrets frozen inside the ice, hoping to find the valuable information that could provide important insights into Earth’s past climate and future environmental changes.
SOURCES: https://www.bbc.co.uk/newsround/articles/ce8zl6lr040o
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c5ygwd6yj28o

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