An international team of scientists has successfully drilled and extracted a 2,800-meter-long ice core from Antarctica, reaching down to the bedrock. This remarkable achievement, accomplished after four years of work at Little Dome C, provides a continuous record of Earth's climate history stretching back 1.2 million years. This is double the previous record of 800,000 years. The ice core contains trapped air bubbles that act like tiny time capsules, allowing researchers to analyze past levels of greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide and methane.
The project, called Beyond EPICA, aims to understand a major shift in Earth's climate rhythm known as the Mid-Pleistocene Transition, which occurred between 900,000 and 1.25 million years ago. Before this period, ice ages occurred every 41,000 years, but afterward, they began cycling every 100,000 years. Scientists are still investigating the cause of this change.
Analyzing the ice core, which endured extremely cold temperatures during its extraction, has already revealed significant data. For instance, current carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere are higher than any recorded in the 1.2 million-year ice record. The ice also shows that around 950,000 years ago, carbon dioxide levels dropped to their lowest point ever found in a continuous ice record. This ancient ice offers valuable insights into past climate changes and could help improve future climate predictions.