Donald Voigt, chief scientist at the WAIS Divide Camp, examines an ice core.
Posted on 02/06/2013 1:21:49 AM PST by neverdem
Donald Voigt, chief scientist at the WAIS Divide Camp, examines an ice core.
A team of U.S. ice-coring scientists and engineers in Antarctica, funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF), have recovered from the ice sheet a record of past climate and greenhouse gases in the atmosphere that extends back 68,000 years.
Retrieved from the West Antarctic Ice Sheet (WAIS), the ice containing the record is known as the WAIS Divide ice core. The cylinders of ice that make up the core contain uniquely detailed information on past environmental conditions such as the atmospheric concentration of greenhouse gases, surface air temperature, wind patterns, the extent of sea ice around Antarctica, and the average temperature of the ocean.
Successfully retrieving the core is the culmination of an eight-year project to obtain a paleoclimate record from one of the remotest parts of the continent.
The ice containing the record was recovered at a field camp in the center of West Antarctica, 1,040 kilometers (650 miles) from the geographic South Pole, where the ice is more than 3,460 meters (two miles) thick. In the new WAIS Divide core each of the past 30,000 years of snowfall can be identified in individual layers of ice. By allowing an examination of past climate at an annual resolution, the record will help scientists understand why climate can change abruptly--in less than 10 years--and how climate could unfold in the coming century.
Other ice-coring projects have produced cores of lower temporal resolution, showing that the current level of atmospheric greenhouse gases, which is due to the burning of fossil fuels, is the highest in at least 800,000 years.The ice that is between 30,000 and 68,000 years old--while not containing records with annual resolution--contains a higher time resolution record than previous projects.
When snow falls at WAIS Divide, it rarely melts, but builds up in thick annual layers, which are compressed into ice by subsequent snowfall. Chemicals and gases in the atmosphere that are characteristic of environmental conditions when the snow fell are trapped in the ice. The age of the ice is determined by identifying the chemical difference between winter snow and summer snow, and counting the years is much like counting tree rings to determine how old a tree is.
The first replicate ice core ever taken from the high side of an ice-core borehole is shown.
Samples of the ice core will be distributed to more than 20 U.S. university and national laboratories that make the measurements. Most of the measurements are known to be indicative of global atmospheric conditions, not just of the conditions at the remote location where the ice was collected.
The information from the project will be used to test and improve the predictions of how the current human-caused increases in greenhouses gases (e.g., carbon dioxide, methane) are altering the earth's climate.
"The combination of being able to identify individual years and new analytical methods that were not available on previous projects will greatly improve our understanding of how past changes in greenhouse gases influenced the global climate," said Kendrick Taylor, of the Desert Research Institute, in Reno Nevada, and chief scientist for the WAIS Divide project.
He added that it will take another two years to complete the analysis of the ice and publish the results.
The WAIS Divide research project has taken eight field seasons to prepare the remote field camp and collect the core. The weather and the remoteness of the field site limit field operations to 60 days a year. The unique ice-coring drill was designed and operated by the Ice Drilling Design and Operations group at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, through a collaborative arrangement with the Ice Drilling Program Office.
In addition to collecting 3,405 meters (11,160 feet) of a 12.2-centimeter (4.8-inch) diameter ice core, a new directional-drilling procedure was developed that allowed the team to drill through the wall of the main hole and collect a total of 285 meters (936 feet) of additional core from five of the most scientifically interesting time periods. This enables replication of the results and expands the suite of measurements that can be made on the most interesting ice.
This is the first time anyone has ever taken additional ice core out of the side of the borehole without blocking access to the lower part of the main borehole. It's an engineering breakthrough that will allow us to look in great detail at the causes of abrupt climate change," said Jeff Severinghaus of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, chief scientist for replicate coring.
The team stopped drilling 165 feet above where the ice contacts the rock below in order to avoid contaminating the water at the bottom of the ice, which has been isolated from the rest of the biosphere for at least 100,000 years.
Source : National Science Foundation
Have the Russians released any data on the ancient pristine Antarctic “lake” they drilled down to last year?
I have no confidence in their project planning and scientific standards.
Numerous concerns were published on several blogs about their drilling procedures and the tremendous risk of contaminating lake samples and contaminating the lake itself.
It broke my heart that no one from a major research university stepped up and asked them to stop, or at least urged them to ask for assistance.
The lake they drilled into was perfectly preserved and thousands of years old.
It was a treasure chest of scientific information which may now be completely useless.
The Russians had a drunken celebration when they hit the lake and unfortunately someone tripped with a half a bottle of vodka in his hand. You guessed it, the bottle went straight down the bore hole contaminating the lake.
This precipitated a series of events that awoke a long dormant dinosaur like monster which swam a series of connecting tunnels into the open ocean. Now Tokyo is about to be attacked by this self same monster but they hope to calm it with daily doses of Stolychnoya 150 proof vodka!
I swear it’s all true...I saw it on the SY FY channel!
So,a six inch core of ice represents billions and billions of cubic feet of atmosphere? Uh huh...
They fished for 3 straight days using everything from wigglers to minnows to spikes and Jenseneggs and not one perch was caught......They did catch a couple small bluegills however but threw them back.
Not sure where you got that idea.
From the article...
In addition to collecting 3,405 meters (11,160 feet) of a 12.2-centimeter (4.8-inch) diameter ice core, a new directional-drilling procedure was developed that allowed the team to drill through the wall of the main hole and collect a total of 285 meters (936 feet) of additional core from five of the most scientifically interesting time periods. This enables replication of the results and expands the suite of measurements that can be made on the most interesting ice.
Interesting projection taking a sample that is estimated at 68,000 years old max and making a projection goimg back 800,000 years is not science. Nor even an intelligent guess.
Going back 68,000 years would include at least two recent north American glaciation periods 10,000 years apart, an estimated 48,000 and 58,000 years ago.
Stuff like this brings out the Moses in me...
Other ice-coring projects have produced cores of lower temporal resolution, showing that the current level of atmospheric greenhouse gases, which is due to the burning of fossil fuels, is the highest in at least 800,000 years.
Why was there no mention of VOLCANIC ACTIVITY in the reports? After all, in 800,000 years I’m sure that fossil fuel contaminants would pale to volcanic samples.
This foray into climate change studies is simply some more intellectual “smoke and mirrors” to justify the green movement.
So, like you, I have very little confidence in any of their analysis.
YMMV
This is the only type of data which seems to have any sensible relation to geologic-time-scale climate variation.
Only two possibilities exist - the data will support AGW or it will not. If it does, wonderful! Headline news!If, as I confidently expect, it does not - well, if a tree falls in the forrest and nobody hears it, does it matter whether it made a sound or not?.
Journalists put one in mind of the three blind, deaf, and dumb monkeys. Only instead of “Speak no evil,” they speak no good.
The information from the project will be used to test and improve the predictions of how the current human-caused increases in greenhouses gases (e.g., carbon dioxide, methane) are altering the earth's climate.
What crap!
“In addition to collecting 3,405 meters (11,160 feet) of a 12.2-centimeter (4.8-inch) diameter ice core, a new directional-drilling procedure was developed that allowed the team to drill through the wall of the main hole and collect a total of 285 meters (936 feet) of additional core...”
So - they fracked the well? But fracking is bad!
“...showing that the current level of atmospheric greenhouse gases, which is due to the burning of fossil fuels, is the highest in at least 800,000 years...”
I always chafe at the disingenuous context in which such factual statements are made. The (false) focus in to support the current agenda of Global Warming (as a political and ideological cause) and ignores that the level was higher before humans walked the earth. There will be almost zero interest in investigating the causes of this previous peak, or any other peak.
Oh, that makes all the difference, then. A 4.8 inch core will definitely tell more than a six inch core.
Seriously, do think any core, no matter the diameter can represent global conditions as opposed to local?
Stoly makes a 150?
Why wasn’t I told?
It was 1983 at a party, height of the cold war...some special stock of STOLI from Russia bought from somebody who knew somebody...the labels were all in Russian though the name was recognizable as was the proof number and he paid some 70 or 80 bucks to get a bottle(a liter). You couldn’t normally get it from a local alcohol package store because of the import restrictions at the time.
I was introduced to frozen shots of Stoli 150...they would pour a shot of the vodka into a shot glass and freeze it for about 15 minutes until the water all sublimated out...then pour a little more in and freeze again until one had a shot full of the unadulterated vodka....nearly 200 proof with just the latent flavorings and unfiltered ingredients that made STOLI in fact STOLI! It was thick and syrupy at nearly 0 degrees and it went down the throat like a blue flame after a hearty shout of NOSTROVIA(!) to raised glasses which were then downed in unison.
Now I don’t know if the 150 is available in this country or not,(or even if they still make it) like I said, in 1983, the party host had had it “imported” from Russia. He implied that it had been diplomatically pouched in some way.
5cm/year ... I have to doubt somehow that the data will be as good as they will claim. Surely over tens of thousands of years there is diffusion, especially of gasses, from layer to layer. I don’t see this as obtaining a true year-by-year record.
I hope they either do all they can to determine diffusion rates and clearly report error-bars, or make clear that process casts some doubt on the reliability of their findings.
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