A 1.5 million -year -old piece of ice has arrived in the UK, where scientists will melt it to get vital information about Earth’s climate.
The cores were stored in an ice cave in Antarctica. YouTube video capture
The ice cylinder is considered to be the oldest on the planet, in order to obtain it, it is necessary to drill the depths of the Antarctic glacier.
Inside are frozen thousands of years of new information about which scientists say they could “revolutionize“What we know about climate change, according to the BBC.
Ice cores were stored in a cave in Antarctica before being loaded on a boat to Europe.
“This is a completely unknown period in the history of our land”Says Dr. Liz Thomas, head of the Ice Corresponding British Corcers’ research department.
Above the door blinks red warning lights, and inside there is an emergency exhaust hatch in a tunnel, if something does not work well.
The ice will be melted slowly, for six weeks, releasing ancient dust, volcanic ash and even small marine algae called diatomes, which were blocked inside when the water turned into ice.
These materials can provide scientists with information about wind models, temperature and sea levels for over a million years ago.
2.8 km of ice were extracted
The extraction of ice cores from Antarctica was a huge multinational effort, with a cost of millions of dollars was cut into blocks and transported by boat, then in a Cambridge refrigerator.
2.8 km of ice were extracted – over eight eiffel towers placed each other – transverse sections of the nucleus being sent to Germany and Switzerland.
Teams were able to find evidence of a period of more than 800,000 years ago, when carbon dioxide concentrations could have been naturally as high or even higher than now, according to Dr. Thomas.
This could help him understand what will happen in our future, as our planet reacts to heating the gases trapped in the atmosphere.
The drilling took place about 40 km from the Italian-French research station Concordia.
“Our climatic system has gone through so many different changes that we must necessarily come back in time to understand these different processes and climate change points“She says.
The difference between the present and the previous eras with high greenhouse gas emissions is that now people have caused the rapid growth of gases that cause heating over the last 150 years.
This takes us to an unknown territory, but scientists hope that the records of the history of our planet, blocked in ice, could give us some guidance.
The team will identify chemical isotopes in the liquid that could tell us about wind models, temperatures and rainfall for a period of time between 800,000 and up to 1.5 million years ago or possibly more.
They will use an instrument called inductive plasma table spectrometer (ICPMS) to measure over 20 elements and traces of metals.
These include elements of rare lands, sea salts and marine elements, as well as indicators of the volcanic eruptions of the past.
Climate change took place at 41,000
The work will help scientists to understand a mysterious change called the transition of the middle Pleistocene, of 800,000 – 1.2 million years ago, when the glacial cycles of the planet have changed suddenly.
The transition from warmer eras to cold glacial eras, when the ice covered much more soil, took place every 41,000 years, but changed abruptly at 100,000 years.
The cause of this change is one of “most interesting unresolved questions“From the science of climate, according to Dr. Thomas.
It is possible that the evidence contains evidence of a period when the sea level was much higher than it is now and when the vast Antarctic glacial caps were lower.
The presence of dust in the ice will help them understand how glacial cars decreased and how they have contributed to increased sea level – a major concern in this century.
