What data do we get from glacial ice cores?
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What data do we get from glacial ice cores?
Most ice core records come from Antarctica and Greenland. Ice cores contain information about past temperature, and about many other aspects of the environment. Atmospheric carbon dioxide levels are now 50% higher than before the industrial revolution. This increase is due to fossil fuel usage and changes in land-use.
What kind of data does the Greenland ice core Project provide?
Greenland ice cores provide a high-quality high-resolution estimate of past changes in temperatures, allowing more precise comparisons with observed temperature records than most other climate proxies.
What is the oldest ice core data?
The oldest continuous ice core records extend to 130,000 years in Greenland, and 800,000 years in Antarctica. Ice cores are typically drilled by means of either a mechanical or thermal drill.
What do ice cores tell us?
They collect ice cores in many locations around Earth to study regional climate variability and compare and differentiate that variability from global climate signals. The samples they collect from the ice, called ice cores, hold a record of what our planet was like hundreds of thousands of years ago.
What type of data is obtained by studying ice cores?
Through analysis of ice cores, scientists learn about glacial-interglacial cycles, changing atmospheric carbon dioxide levels, and climate stability over the last 10,000 years. Many ice cores have been drilled in Antarctica.
How far back does the co2 record go in Antarctica?
1.5 million years
Summary: How far into the past can ice-core records go? Scientists have now identified regions in Antarctica they say could store information about Earth’s climate and greenhouse gases extending as far back as 1.5 million years, almost twice as old as the oldest ice core drilled to date.
How are ice core used as proxy data?
Ice cores from glaciers and the polar ice caps are probably the most comprehensive type of proxy record of past climates. Physical and chemical analysis of ice cores provides information on temperature, precipitation, atmospheric aerosols (such as dust and volcanic ash), and even levels of solar activity.
How can ice cores be used as evidence of climate change?
Ice cores. Scientists often use ice cores to detect changes in temperatures. When snow falls it traps air into the ice. When scientists take a core of ice it reveals the atmospheric gas concentrations at the time the snow fell.
How far back do ice core samples go?
800,000 years
Ice core records allow us to generate continuous reconstructions of past climate, going back at least 800,000 years[2].
What is the highest concentration of CO2 in the past 650000 years?
387 parts per million
Scientists at the Mauna Loa observatory in Hawaii say that CO2 levels in the atmosphere now stand at 387 parts per million (ppm), up almost 40% since the industrial revolution and the highest for at least the last 650,000 years.
Is Earth still in an ice age?
Correctly speaking, Earth remains in an ice age. Ice still sits thick atop Greenland and Antarctica, holding enough water to raise sea levels by hundreds of feet; and in recent decades, the ice sheets have begun to melt more rapidly.
