(ORDO NEWS) — In Antarctica, as part of the program to extract the oldest sample of ice, the first core has already been extracted. This is reported by the British Antarctic Survey.
As noted, at the turn of the 20th-21st centuries, the European Project for Ice Coring in Antarctica (EPICA) took place in Antarctica. During it, experts managed to drill a hole to the lowest part of the Antarctic ice sheet to a depth of 3200 meters.
Ancient ice from this depth keeps the imprint of the climate that was observed 800 thousand years ago, which is very important for understanding the evolution of the Earth‘s biosphere.
Now, during the Beyond EPICA – Oldest Ice project, which started in 2019, scientists intend to extract even more ancient samples, which will be about 1.5 million years old.
“We are confident that this core will give us information about the climate and greenhouse gases of the atmosphere during the Middle Pleistocene transition 900-1200 thousand years ago,” said Carlo Barbante, project coordinator from the Institute of Polar Sciences of the National Research Council of Italy.
According to him, during this time interval, the intervals between ice ages increased from 41 to 100 thousand years, and scientists want to find out why this happened.
Drilling is carried out in the area of the Small Dome C, 34 kilometers from the Italian-French station Concordia. The specialists plan to drill a mine, the depth of which will be 2,700 meters.
To date, a drilling rig has already been installed and a cave has been built to store samples. The first 130 meters have also been covered and the first cores have been extracted.
Earlier, a spawning ground the size of a city was found off the coast of Antarctica.
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