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Article: Frozen crystal balls: ice cores offer clues to the climate.(Currents)(European Project for Ice Coring in the Antarctic)
- Article from:
- E Magazine
- Article date:
- November 1, 2004
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2004 Earth Action Network, Inc. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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At a site called Dome C on the eastern side of the Antarctic continent, the European Project for Ice Coring in the Antarctic (EPICA) recently removed cylinders of ice from a depth of nearly two miles. When the crew returns in December to finish the five-year project and remove the last 328 feet of ice, they will uncover a bedrock layer that has not been touched by light or air in more than 900,000 years.
But why is old ice so interesting to the scientific community? "What you see in this record, combined with earlier data, are the rules by which climate works, and these are the rules that go into climate models for prediction of the future," says Eric Wolff, ...