AN ICE core recently shipped from Antarctica has yielded its first, eagerly awaited results. The tests confirm that the 3200-metre core dates back at least 750,000 years, making the ice the oldest continuous core ever retrieved.
Gases and particles trapped in the layers of an ice core provide information about the Earth’s climate and atmosphere. Oxygen and hydrogen isotopes reveal the temperature when the ice formed, for example, while high carbon dioxide and methane levels indicate periods of global warming.
A group of research teams called the European Project for Ice Coring in Antarctica (EPICA) has been drilling cores…
