On the line -- Studying West Antarctic Ice Cores
In one small corner of the sprawling Denver Federal Center campus in suburban Lakewood, Colorado, about a dozen people, bundled up in thickly insulated Carhartt jumpsuits, wool caps, scarves and gloves, are slicing and dicing ice.
And not just any ice. This is ice from Antarctica, extracted from the middle of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet (WAIS) by the world's most advanced ice-coring drill. Researchers from across the United States will eventually analyze various properties of the ice to reconstruct the last 100,000 years of climatic and atmospheric conditions.
The results will lead to one of the most detailed histories of the last glacial period, when ice sheets blanketed parts of North America. The information about the past will also help scientists better understand the links between climate change and greenhouse gases, as the world continues to warm in the 21st century.
Read more about ice core research and the research being conducted in West Antarctica in "On the line" by Peter Rejcek in the Antarctic Sun, the U.S. Antarctic Program's online magazine, at http://antarcticsun.usap.gov/science/contenthandler.cfm?id=2233.
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