Ein Blog über Forschung im MINT-Bereich

Tag: polar research

Steps Back into the Past of the Ice Cores and the Planet

About Ice Cores Part III

by Hanna Sophie Knahl

Ice cores preserve stories of the past. Now we want to compare these stories  with other history books. Illustration: Hanna Knahl

We have now already learned a lot about ice cores. We know where to find them, how to drill them and how to extract information about the past climate from them. BUT there is still one important piece of information missing. The time stamp. How do we determine how far back in time the ice we hold with our gloved hands comes from? We will see, the ice also uses special languages to encode this secret.

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The Story of Giant Libraries Made of Ice

About Ice Cores Part I

by Hanna Sophie Knahl

A transforming icy library slowly descending towards the valley. Glacier in the northeast of Greenland. Photo: Jan Rohde

On earth there is a lot of ice and snow and not only in winter – at least at the moment. At the poles there are huge sheets of ice and in between exist many smaller and larger glaciers on high mountains. Stories are preserved in the ice. Stories from long ago. How this happened and how these stories can be brought to the surface, we will learn in this article.

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