Ice Coring: In Whisky Veritas
24 May 2005 - Interviews, Logistics, Ice & Snow
Claude Lorius (left) in the earliest days of glaciology at Camp Charcot. © CNRS/LGGE
© CNRS/LGGE / CNRS/LGGE
Interview with one of the founding fathers of ice coring, Claude Lorius.
"Looking for young researchers to participate in expeditions organised in honour of the International Geophysics Year". When he answered this job advertisement in 1955, Claude Lorius, a young physicist at the University of Besançon (in eastern France) had no idea that his future career would centre on the polar regions of the world and the study of climate.
Nor did he know that some 22 research expeditions to the Arctic and Antarctic would feature in his life, and that he would become one of the fathers of what is now an essential tool for paleoclimatic study: ice coring!
In 1957, after his "initiation" in Greenland into the "new science" of glaciology, he moved to the Charcot research station, a tiny French base perched at an altitude of 2,400 metres on the Antarctic ice sheet.
After several summer campaigns, in 1965 Claude Lorius led the over-wintering team at the Ad&ecute;lie Land coastal base and started to collect ice cores, while at the same time becoming interested in the air bubbles trapped in the ice: "It was when I saw these bubbles bursting when an ice cube melted in a glass of whisky that I had the feeling they could be reliable and unique indicators of the composition of air, something we subsequently proved was correct", he remembers.
By: Jean de Pomereu
