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Breakthrough Antarctic ice extraction ‘an enormous victory,’ U of Manitoba researcher says

An international team of scientists, including a researcher from the University of Manitoba, has drilled what’s believed to be the world’s longest continuous record of ice at a remote site in Antarctica — a breakthrough expected to reveal insights into Earth’s historical climate patterns going back over 1.2 million years.

Scientists hope the research project, which drilled down to the bedrock beneath the Antarctic ice sheet, will shed light on the planet’s atmospheric history through greenhouse gases preserved in air bubbles trapped within the 2,800-metre ice core the scientists extracted, the University of Manitoba said in a news release Thursday.

“For us that’s been part of the project, it’s an enormous victory,” said Dorthe Dahl-Jensen, the Canada Excellence Research Chair in Arctic Sea Ice, Freshwater-Marine Coupling and Climate Change at the University of Manitoba.

“It’s absolutely amazing. It’s a dream.”

While Dahl-Jensen works at the U of M, she’s also affiliated with a team based in Denmark that was involved in the latest ice core project. 

She said that development was the result of extensive work using radar to map out a spot to drill that the researchers believed would have ice from the long-gone time period they were looking for. 

“This is trapped atmospheric air from that time. So imagine standing with air that’s 1.5 million years old in your hand,” she said. “And we can measure the greenhouse gases that there was at that time.”

While much older ice has been found by scientists from other parts of the world, the recent ice core is the longest continuous climate sequence ever extracted, according to the U of M. The ice core recovered earlier this month was removed in pieces before being shipped out for research purposes, and can be re-assembled later in sequence.

“It’s like having a measuring tape. It’s all in one part,” said Dahl-Jensen. 

That information from the past could help scientists better understand what’s happening with the planet’s climate in the present day — and what might happen in the future.

“So in many ways, we are also going into the old world where we find the analog to what we are going into right now,” she said.

The research project involved collaboration between scientific and logistical teams from across Europe. It was funded by the European Commission, with support from national partners across Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom, the university said.

Dahl-Jensen added groups from other countries have been doing similar work, including Australia, the United States and Japan, but her team was able to come out ahead in that race.

“We are far in front of all the others. And of course, that’s really cool,” she said.

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