Seminar

"Ice core science has been key to improve our understanding of the climate system at different time scales and to put in perspective the human impact. Through two new projects, the team currently extends the spectrum of information to be deciphered from these unique natural archives made of snow and ice accumulated through time.

The first one is called SUBGLACIOR : it aims at probing the Antarctic ice sheet over possibly 3 kilometers of ice thickness, within only one to two months, in search for the oldest ice on the planet. With an embarked laser spectrometer in the probe, the history of climate back to 1.5 million years ago is hoped to be accessed straight from the field.

The second project is called ICE MEMORY : with this project, they drill heritage ice cores from mountain glaciers being under threat due to global warming, to store them on the very long term in Antarctica for the next generations of ice core scientists. Through this presentation, Jerome Chappellaz will address the main reasons motivating these projects as well as some of the challenges to overcome."