Bypass Chapter Navigation
Contents  
Foreword by Walter Cronkite  
Introduction - The National Science Foundation at 50: Where Discoveries Begin, by Rita Colwell  
Internet: Changing the Way we Communicate  
Advanced Materials: The Stuff Dreams are Made of  
Education: Lessons about Learning  
Manufacturing: The Forms of Things Unknown  
Arabidopsis: Map-makers of the Plant Kingdom  
Decision Sciences: How the Game is Played  
Visualization: A Way to See the Unseen  
Environment: Taking the Long View  
Astronomy: Exploring the Expanding Universe  
Science on the Edge: Arctic and Antarctic Discoveries
Disaster & Hazard Mitigation  
About the Photographs  
Acknowledgments  
About the NSF  
Chapter Index  
Science on the Edge: Arctic and Antarctic Research
 

Ice Cores Hold Earth's Climate

Ice Cores Hold Earth's ClimateAs ice forms, gasses and other materials are trapped in the layers that build up over time. This makes the polar regions time machines. With more than 500,000 years of snow and ice accumulation, the ice sheets are ideal places for paleoclimatologists to set up their tubular drills and extract cores—long cylinders of sediment and rock—in order to read the history captured therein.

Working in the center of Antarctica's ice sheet, near the Russian research base of Vostok, a group of researchers from the United States, Russia, and France have extracted the world's deepest core. As a result, the scientists have differentiated more than four ice ages, or about 400,000 years of history.

What researchers are discovering is that Earth's climate is not stable, and never has been. Ice ages are punctuated by interglacial periods of relative warmth, such as the one marking the close of the twentieth century. The interglacial periods have been marked by sudden shifts in temperature, wind patterns, and sea levels.

"Some of these rapid changes occur in two decades," says Paul Mayewski, a glaciologist from the University of New Hampshire and a thirty-year veteran of NSF-funded research in Antarctica. "Some [of the pattern changes] actually start in less than two years." While he finds these dramatic shifts surprising, he also notes that Antarctic cores are in sync with the climate data found in the ice cores from Greenland.

Mayewski and his colleagues learn about these changes by examining the chemical indicators, such as sea salt, within the extracted ice cores. High sea salt levels signal increased storminess and stronger winds. In addition, measurements of oxygen isotopes in the ice reveal cooling during periods of increased sea salt. Other tests probe for indicators of wind patterns, volcanic activity, and sea level.

However, the researchers still don't know what caused the rapid climate pattern changes evidenced in the ice cores.

"We need to understand how these changes work in order to make a better assessment of natural climatic change," Mayewski says, "and a better assessment of the human impact on the future climate."

 
     
PDF Version
Intro
A Surprising Abundance of Life
Human Migration and Local Knowledge
The Importance of Sea Ice
Studying Extremes Above and Below
Ozone Hole over Antarctica
Knowledge of the Whole
Ice Cores Hold Earth's Climate
Like Doing Research on the Moon
Why the Ozone Hole?
To Learn More...
 

Search   |   Site map   |   NSF Home   |   OLPA Home   
|   Questions |