Ancient Ice Core to Provide New Insight into Future Climate Change
25.11.2009 - Ice & Snow, Other, Antarctic
An international team of scientists from Australia, Great Britain, the United States and France is hoping to learn more about the role of carbon dioxide in past climate changes to see how increasing levels of CO2 might influence our climate today. The aim of the ICECAP (Investigating the Cryospheric Evolution of the Central Antarctic Plate) project is to use a radar-equipped plane on approximately 15 flights over East Antarctica this summer to determine the ice thickness and explore the underlying bedrock.
In flying over East Antarctica, the team will be looking to find ice that is over one million years old in an area where the ice sheet is the thickest and snowfall rates are the lowest. In doing so, the team might be able to determine the ideal drilling site to retrieve an ice-core, from which information up to 1.3 million years old could be obtained.
Besides providing more accuracy to existing models used for the prediction of sea-level rise, the research will serve to identify areas where the bedrock is lower than sea level. This will, in turn, help model how this melting contributes to increased ice loss and subsequent sea-level rise.
