EPICA Project Rewarded by the European Union
13.03.2008 - Other
The European Project for Ice Coring in Antarctica (EPICA) is one of the four laureates to have received the European Union's Descartes Prize on March 12, 2008. Amounting to a total of 1.36 million euros, this award is granted to outstanding European projects having excelled in scientific research.
The EPICA project is a European Science Foundation (ESF) project, gathering scientists from 10 different countries. By drilling two ice cores in Antarctica (at Dome C and in the Dronning Maud Land), this project has allowed scientists to reconstruct the history of our climate, an important asset in view of current climate change issues.
The first ice core the scientists retrieved allowed them to reconstruct both temperature variations and the atmosphere's Greenhouse gas composition over the past 800,000 years. The second ice core has enabled scientists to study in extreme detail the coupling of Northern atmosphere climate with that of the Southern atmosphere. The ice cores and samples are then sent back to various European labs for analysis.
"Only in such close collaboration between all European working groups has it been possible to carry out such a large-scale project logistically and scientifically", says Hubertus Fischer, the German glaciologist from the Alfred Wegener Institute who coordinated EPICA's application process for the Descartes Award.
