Page 9 - Polar Sciences News Today

The first ice core drilling campaign of Beyond Epica-Oldest Ice has been successfully completed at the remote Little Dome C site in Antarctica – one of the most extreme places on Earth. By analyzing a deep ice core extracted from the Antarctic ice sheet, scientists aim to find out information on the evolution of the temperatures, the composition of the atmosphere, and on the carbon cycle over the last 1.5 million years.

Ente di diritto pubblico finalizzato alla ricerca e allinnovazione tecnologica, nonché alla prestazione di servizi avanzati alle imprese, alla pubblica amministrazione e ai cittadini nei settori dellenergia, dellambiente e dello sviluppo economico sostenibile

As soon as the remotely operated camera glimpsed the bottom of the Weddell Sea, more than 1,000 feet below the icy ceiling at the surface, Lilian Boehringer, a student researcher at the Alfred Wegener Institute in Germany, saw the icefish nests. The sandy craters dimpled the seafloor, each the size of a hula hoop and less than a foot apart. Each crater held a single, stolid icefish, dark pectoral fins outspread like bat wings over a clutch of eggs.

‘Major discovery’ beneath Antarctic seas: a giant icefish breeding colony

Scientists discovered a mammoth nesting ground with an estimated 60 million icefish nests in the Weddell Sea.

A research team has begun an €11-million (US$12.9-million) project with the hopes of collecting the oldest continuous ice core in Antarctica, providing a record of the climate spanning some 1.5 million years.

Researchers have come from 10 countries to Antarctica to begin the first stages of an ambitious plan -- drilling deeper into the ice than ever before to reach back 1.5 million years, and find key clues that could aid in the struggle with climate change.

A team of international experts revealed that ocean warming of the Arctic started way earlier than previously thought. The study suggests that since the beginning of the 20th Century, the Arctic Ocean had already been getting warmer due to the recent expansion of warming Atlantic water, called "Atlantification".

A near-3km-long core of ice should contain a record of climate change going back 1.5 million years.

The Arctic Ocean has been getting warmer since the beginning of the 20th century – decades earlier than records suggest – due to warmer water flowing into the delicate polar ecosystem from the Atlantic Ocean.