ice core record

Geosciences Column: The best spots to hunt for ancient ice cores

Olivia Trani July 13, 2018

The shore of Livingston Island from the South Shetland Islands in Antarctica. Photo: Antarctic public transport. Credit: Carsten W. Mueller (distributed via imaggeo.egu.eu)

Where in the world can you find some of Earth’s oldest ice? That is the question a team of French and US scientists aimed to answer. They recently identified spots in East Antarctica that likely have the right conditions to harbor ice that formed 1.5 million years ago. Scientists hope that obtaining and analysing an undisturbed sample of ice this old will give them clues about Earth’s ancient clim ...[Read More]

Geosciences Column: The hunt for Antarctica’s oldest time capsule

Ruth Amey January 12, 2018

Preparing the ice corer for deployment, EPICA project, Kohnen Station, Dronning Maud Land, Antarctica (Operators: Prof. Dr. Frank Wilhelms and Lorenz Karsten). NB: This image is not related to the study featured in this post . Credit: Hannes Grobe, Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research (distributed via Wikimedia Commons).

The thick packs of ice that pepper high peak of the world’s mountains and stretch far across the poles make an unusual time capsule. As it forms, air bubbles are trapped in the ice, allowing scientists to peer into the composition of the Earth’s atmosphere long ago. Today’s Geosciences Column is brought to you by PhD researcher Ruth Amey, who writes about recently published resea ...[Read More]

Imaggeo on Mondays: Iceberg at midnight

Laura Roberts-Artal January 5, 2015

Standing on the vast expanse of gleaming white sea ice of the Atka Bay, Michael Bock took this stunning picture of an Antarctic iceberg. The days, during the Antarctic summer, are never ending. Despite capturing the image at midnight, Michael was treated to hazy sunlight. “Clearly visible [in the iceberg] are the annual snow accumulation layers which illustrate how the ice archive works.; as you l ...[Read More]

Geosciences Column: The Toba eruption probably did have a global effect after all

Sara Mynott July 25, 2014

Almost everyone has heard of the Toba super-eruption, which took place on the island of Sumatra roughly 74,000 years ago, but the only evidence of tephra or tuff (volcanic fragments) from the eruption is in Asia, with nothing definite further afield. It has sometimes been thought that this huge eruption may have led to a volcanic winter, a period of at least several years of low temperatures follo ...[Read More]