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Scientists to store mountain ice in Antarctica
Eric Hopton for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online
Ice cores from mountain glaciers contain a frozen history of the earth’s atmosphere and how it changes over time. Scientists collecting ice from ancient glaciers to study those changes have a problem – where can you safely store the cores without the risk of them melting? One novel solution is to bury them in the world’s biggest, coldest, and most reliable natural deep freeze facility – Antarctica.
That’s exactly what researchers from the French National Center for Scientific Research (FNCSR) are planning to do by creating an ice archive in a snow cave at the Concordia Research Station. The ice cores will be buried over 30 feet deep where the permanent ice will keep a constant temperature of -50 C.
Power cut proofing
Unlike the commercial deep freeze operations where such ice cores are usually stored, conditions in the Antarctic mean there is no risk of a disastrous power cut.
According to the BBC, FNCRS scientists have found rising temperatures inside glaciers like that at the Col du Dome on Mont Blanc where the ice has warmed 1.5 C between 1994 and 2005. As this trend continues, many non-polar glaciers will disappear.
Initially, the scientists intend to store mountain glacial ice from the Col du Dome and the Illimani mountain in the Bolivian Andes at Concordia. Eventually they plan to extend the ice archive to include cores from as far as the Rockies and the Himalayas.
Some of the 4 inch diameter cores will be sent to a laboratory in France for analysis. Glacial ice contains air bubbles that recorded the atmosphere that existed when the ice was formed.
A blueprint of climate change
“Ice contains an absolutely unique record of our climate,” Mark Brandon, a polar oceanographer from the UK’s Open University told the BBC. Further analysis of the ice should give us valuable insights into the planet’s past climate and atmosphere.
By comparing mountain and polar ice, scientists may be able to distinguish between natural climate change and the effects of human activity.
The French team hopes to gather more funding for their project and to widen it into an international operation to help us understand more about global climate change.
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Source: http://www.redorbit.com/news/science/1113398842/scientists-to-store-glacial-ice-in-antarctica-052815/
