Wegener Institute's Antarctic Ice Core Details Climate For 740,000 Years

[hatrack]

GERMANY: An ice core bored to a depth of 3 km in the Antarctic is providing new information on climate change in the past. An European research team, including members from the Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research in the German city of Bremerhaven, has conducted tests on the ice, which is up to 740,000 years old and is considered the world’s longest ice core.

The core, which was drilled in December ’04 during the European Project for Ice Coring in Antarctica (EPICA), reveals more than eight successive alternations of cold and warm periods. It provides the longest continuous ice core ‘archive’ that has ever been drilled. The researchers looked into the concentrations of chemical components from aerosol particles in the ice, carried to Antarctica by wind. They found that the extent of the ice shelf around the Antarctic land mass varied closely according to temperature.

The results also revealed that the southern tip of South America was, at one time, considerably drier and windier than it is today and this led to more dust being carried to Antarctica. These dust particles provided nutrients for algae in the waters in the region.

There was, however, no increase in the number of organisms during the colder periods, as had been expected. “We have to rethink our ideas regarding an increase in biological activity during the ice ages, at least in the southern parts of the southern oceans,” Hubertus Fischer of the Alfred Wegener Institute said.


EDIT

http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/articleshow/1475576.cms

[xchrom]

1. just a teaser!

great article -- but it's just the beginning -- i already want to know more.

[Odin2005]

2. Damn, looks like Lovelock's idea on glacial periods was wrong.

He thought total biomass would be higher during glacial periods.