NEEM Ice Coring Project Hits Bedrock in Greenland
30.07.2010 - Ice & Snow, Arctic
On July 27th, scientists from the North Greenland Eemian Ice Drilling (NEEM) project made it to the bottom of the Greenland Ice Sheet at a depth of 2,537.36 metres. After five years of work, the most international ice coring effort to date (300 researchers from 14 nations) managed to retrieve ice from the warm interglacial Eemian period, 130,000 to 115,000 years ago and beyond. It was a fantastic find, as the last 2 meters of ice before hitting the bedrock contain material that has not seen sunlight for hundreds of thousands of years.
The ice, which the scientists expect to be rich in DNA and pollen, should tell them more about the plants that existed in Greenland before the site became covered with ice.
State-of-the-art laser instruments for water isotopes and greenhouse gasses, online impurity measurements and advanced studies of ice crystals allow the researchers to gather information on abrupt climate changes, while greenhouse gas concentration and biological content trapped in the ice could significantly improve their understanding of the natural variability, feedbacks of the carbon and the biogenic cycle, and very detailed chemical measurements that make it possible to see annual variations in climate.
Because the Eemian was a climate period that witnessed a warming similar to the one we will experience in the future, the researchers expect that their findings will increase their knowledge about the Earth’s future climate system, as well as their ability to predict the speed and eventual height of sea level rise.
