Antarctic scientists dig 650 meters under the ice to reveal a 125,000-year-old secret!

Antarctic scientists dug 650 meters below the surface of the West Antarctic ice sheet to “unravel” Earth’s past.

The frozen desert is the southernmost continent in the world and is home to up to 5,000 specialized researchers studying the history of the planet and the effects of climate change, at temperatures as low as -90 degrees Celsius.

Because ice forms from the accumulation of annual layers of snow, the lower layers are older than the upper layers, and the remains captured by the machine allow scientists to search for millions of years.

The different isotope ratios of oxygen and hydrogen provide information on old temperatures, and the trapped air can be analyzed into tiny bubbles to determine the level of gases in the atmosphere, such as carbon dioxide.

During “Adventures in Antarctica”, Cambridge University professor Eric Wolf explained to the Royal Society why he had been inspired to complete such a reading.

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“There are a number of things that make it compelling for something very strange to happen in the climate. The first is that we know, in part from the kind of research I’ve done, that the levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere are higher. than they were at least three million years ago, “he said. “According to physics, it should cause warming and we are watching warming. And if we take these things together, it’s pretty clear that we are doing something dangerous to the atmosphere.

The researchers’ plan to “unravel the secret of Earth’s climate in the past” was revealed, and Professor Wolf explained why it was so important to take a basic sample. “The goal is to excavate an ice core near what is considered the weak part of the ice sheet, in West Antarctica. By looking at that, we should be able to tell if it disappeared or sometimes receded in the past, when it did hotter than before, “he added. Is now. Hopefully we think the ice is about 150,000 years old at the bottom. “

Then a documentary video showed the team trying to cut the long core into various sections.

Dr Robert Mulvaney, scientific program coordinator for the British Antarctic Survey, explained how a given sample can help predict the future of the Earth.

He said in July: “There are many things that can be measured in the ice, almost everything is getting into the atmosphere. Pollution, or gases, or natural things in the atmosphere, somehow if they are transported to the polar regions, these records they are available forever. ” … and maybe the sea levels were a little higher, maybe twenty feet, so we’ll get to the point where the current climate temperature seems to be between the last Ice Age. And it becomes analogous to what we might expect in 100 years or so. “

Source: Express

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