European scientists from 10 area have pass years scouring the Antarctic ice sheet with one ambition in mind : to drill for the old - ever Methedrine sum . Now , they have zeroed in on just the spot .
The team have chosen Little Dome C – one of the cold-blooded , most barren property on Earth . For the next five old age , they will bore for a 1.5 - million - class - old ice essence – a frozen timepiece of Earth ’s climatic past . The news was harbinger at the annual conference of the European Geosciences Union ( EGU ) in Vienna .
Their commission , phone " Beyond EPICA - Oldest Ice ” , will take lieu 30 kilometers ( 18.5 mi ) away from the Concordia Research Station in what is a two - hour snowmobile ride to work .
The squad finalized their location using radar and test drillings at depth of up to 400 meters ( 1,300 feet ) . Three criteria had to be see before they could gear up for a chilly five years : the ice is at least 1.5 million years onetime , there is a high hazard of undecomposed resolve for scientific inquiry , and the layers are undisturbed .
The current record for oldest methamphetamine inwardness is 800,000 years old , taken by theEuropean Project for Ice Coring(EPICA ) project , an depth psychology of which revealed CO2concentrations in the atmosphere over hundred of thousands of years . These cores are track record of ice that have built up over millennia – long icicle scrolls of sorts that have preserved noesis of Earth ’s ancient atmosphere .
The EPICA frappe core provided scientists with plenty of information , but it also presented them with a enigma . They found that starting around 900,000 eld ago , the mood changed from 40,000 - year cycles to 100,000 - twelvemonth cycles . Researchers in the field do n’t know why .
" This time interval is characterized by methamphetamine ages that were interrupted by comparatively short warm period , like the one that we are presently experiencing , every 100,000 twelvemonth or so , ” say Swiss team lead Hubertus Fischer , from the Oeschger Center at the University of Bern , in astatement . " The CO2 absorption also alter at the same time : low values in ice ages , high values in warm periods . ”
The team mistrust the understanding has to do with glasshouse gases , but until they conglomerate more grounds , they ca n’t say for sure . That ’s where the Beyond EPICA - Oldest Ice mission enters the probe .
" After having analyzed the 800,000 - year - old samples acquire from the EPICA ice CORE , we believe that there is honest reason to practice into ice that is at least 1.5 million years previous so as to get more info , ” say mission coordinator Olaf Eisen from the Alfred Wegener Institute ( AWI ) in Bremerhaven ..
" We cognize that our mood is changing,“addedEisen . " What we do n’t yet to the full understand is how the future climate will respond to increase greenhouse gases in our aura beyond 2100 and whether there will be lean point in the system we are not aware of yet . It will be staggeringly helpful if we can understand what bechance when the duration of instinctive climate cycle shift . We can only get this information from the Antarctic ice weather sheet . To be able to venture on this delegacy is hugely exciting . ”
The team will canvass the gas bubbles in the ice to find how the concentration of CO2and methane has change over clock time . It may vocalize counterintuitive but the fact that Little Dome C is dry and experiences little precipitation is really good in this position . The less snow that accumulates each year , the more old age you could pack into each meter of chalk .
" frosting is a very good insulator , " said Eisen to IFLScience . " An ice sheet is always heat from below by the geothermal heat state of flux . The thicker the ice , the more heat is stored at the base until the chicken feed starts to melt . That means : too duncical sparkler will cause melting at the base . At Little Dome C , this vital point is reached at a thickness of around 2800 to 2900 meters . At our propose web site the ice thickness is thin , thus we do n’t have disappear . "
The most intriguing bit of the core will be the deepest layer – the meters when the bewildering transition read stead . Such depths of around 2,730 meters ( 9,000 feet ) wo n’t be reached until 2024 , with the upshot released around 2025 if all goes to plan .
