"An ice core is a core sample that is typically removed from an ice sheet or a high mountain glacier."
Cylindrical samples of ice that are recovered from glaciers and ice sheets for analysis of past climate changes.
Glaciers: Understanding what glaciers are, how they form, and how they move is essential to understanding ice cores.
Climate change: Climate change is a key reason for the study of ice cores. A good understanding of the science behind climate change is necessary.
Paleoclimatology: The study of past climates is an interdisciplinary field that includes the use of ice cores to reconstruct past climate conditions.
Snow accumulation: Understanding how snow accumulates on glaciers and how it becomes ice is important to understanding ice core science.
Firn: The upper layer of snow on a glacier is called firn. Understanding this layer and how it relates to ice cores is important to ice core science.
Layers in ice cores: Ice cores contain a record of past snow deposition and the corresponding climate conditions. Understanding how these layers form and are preserved is key to using ice cores as a climate record.
Oxygen isotope ratio: Understanding how the oxygen isotope ratio changes in ice cores can provide insight into past climate conditions.
Dating methods: Ice cores provide a continuous record of past climate conditions, but in order to use this record, scientists must accurately date the ice core.
Isotope chemistry: Ice cores contain a range of isotopes, including oxygen, carbon, and nitrogen isotopes. Understanding these isotopes and what they can tell us about past climate conditions is important to ice core science.
Trace elements: Ice cores contain trace elements such as dust and volcanic ash. These can provide additional information about past climate conditions.
Glacier monitoring: Understanding current glacier behavior and monitoring changes in glaciers over time is important to the study of ice cores.
Ice core drilling: Understanding how ice cores are drilled and collected is important to the analysis of the ice core data.
Data analysis: Analyzing the data collected from ice cores is a complex process. Understanding the methods used to analyze the data is important to interpreting the results.
Applications of ice core research: Ice cores can be used to understand past climates, but they also have practical applications such as predicting future climate conditions and informing policy decisions related to climate change.
Polar ice cores: These are ice cores that are extracted from the polar regions where the ice sheets are thick and have accumulated over many thousands of years. They are used to study past climate changes and atmospheric composition.
Alpine ice cores: These are ice cores that are extracted from high altitude mountain glaciers. They are generally smaller than polar ice cores and provide information about regional climate changes.
Tropical ice cores: These are ice cores that are extracted from high elevation glaciers in tropical regions such as the Andes and the Himalayas. They are used to study the history of the tropical climate and its environmental effects.
Subpolar ice cores: These are ice cores that are extracted from regions such as Greenland, which is between the polar and alpine regions. They provide information about both regional and global climate changes.
Ice cores from continental ice sheets: These are ice cores that are extracted from continental ice sheets such as Antarctica and Greenland. They provide information on the history of the ice sheet and the climate changes that have occurred over thousands of years.
Firn cores: These are ice cores that are extracted from areas where snow has been compressed but has not yet turned into ice. They are used to study changes in snow accumulation and the history of the atmosphere.
Glacier ice cores: These are ice cores that are extracted from glaciers, which are smaller than ice sheets. They are used to study the history of the glacier and the climate changes that have occurred in the region.
Seasonal ice cores: These are ice cores that are extracted from areas where there are seasonal changes in the ice and snow, such as the Arctic. They are used to study the history of seasonal changes in the climate.
"Cores are drilled with hand augers (for shallow holes) or powered drills."
"Cores can reach depths of over two miles (3.2 km), and contain ice up to 800,000 years old."
"The physical properties of the ice and of material trapped in it can be used to reconstruct the climate over the age range of the core."
"The proportions of different oxygen and hydrogen isotopes provide information about ancient temperatures."
"The air trapped in tiny bubbles can be analyzed to determine the level of atmospheric gases such as carbon dioxide."
"Since heat flow in a large ice sheet is very slow, the borehole temperature is another indicator of temperature in the past."
"Impurities in ice cores may depend on location. Coastal areas are more likely to include material of marine origin, such as sea salt ions."
"Greenland ice cores contain layers of wind-blown dust that correlate with cold, dry periods in the past, when cold deserts were scoured by wind."
"Radioactive elements, either of natural origin or created by nuclear testing, can be used to date the layers of ice."
"Some volcanic events that were sufficiently powerful to send material around the globe have left a signature in many different cores that can be used to synchronize their time scales."
"Ice cores have been studied since the early 20th century..."
"Depths of over 400 m were reached, a record which was extended in the 1960s to 2164 m at Byrd Station in Antarctica."
"Soviet ice drilling projects in Antarctica include decades of work at Vostok Station, with the deepest core reaching 3769 m."
"Cores managed by the British Antarctic Survey and the International Trans-Antarctic Scientific Expedition."
"In Greenland, a sequence of collaborative projects began in the 1970s with the Greenland Ice Sheet Project..."
"The most recent, the East Greenland Ice-Core Project, originally expected to complete a deep core in east Greenland in 2020 but since postponed."
"Several cores were drilled as a result of the International Geophysical Year (1957–1958)."
"Depths of over 400 m were reached..."
"Cores can reach depths of over two miles (3.2 km), and contain ice up to 800,000 years old."