Climate change is one of the most significant issues of our time. It is a phenomenon known for causing long-term alterations in weather patterns and temperatures. While these alterations or shifts have been occurring even before humans emerged, the ongoing climate crisis has strongly been linked to human activities, mainly the emission of greenhouse gases and burning of fossil fuels.
Despite our understanding of these long-term shifts to Earth's climate, researchers continue to study, analyze, and even predict the environmental impacts of this event. Recently, American scientists embarked on an expedition to search the oldest ice in Antarctica and to further understand climate change.
Oldest Ice in Antarctica
Antarctica could be hiding the oldest ice on Earth, as the scientists made the icy continent a subject of a new search expedition, to better comprehend what the history and future of our planet's climate tells us. However, to find the oldest ice in Antarctica is to surpass the 2004 discovery of the oldest existing ice core on record dates back 800,000 years ago.
Available evidence shows that there is plausibly older ice hiding beneath the Earth. Yet, certain challenges such as the constant burying and flowing out of ice deposited on Antarctica's surface. This stored ice eventually melts into the ocean or gets lost in the process.
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COLDEX
The expedition is led by the Center for Oldest Ice Exploration (COLDEX), a federal government-funded collaboration among American universities and science organizations. Under this initiative, scientists aim to search for the Earth's oldest ice, which they believe to be in Antarctica, and use its trapped air to measure greenhouse gas levels going back millions of years.
The COLDEX expedition involved dealing with the driest, coldest, and windiest conditions on the planet, according to a media release of the Pulitzer Center earlier this year. Top US paleoclimatologists established COLDEX backed by an award of $25 million USD from the National Science Foundation.
Ed Brook, a director of COLDEX and paleoclimatologist at Oregon State University, stated that the "oldest is always rare" due to the process of burying and melting of surface ice, as mentioned earlier. Under the project, the goal of the collaboration is to extend the oldest ice core record of 800,0000 years to 3 million years.
Climate Change Threat
Climate change may be as old as life on the planet but it is a subject that has persisted even until now. Since the Industrial Revolution, anthropogenic or human-induced activities has been described as the new contaminant of nature or a major contributor of the natural process of climate change.
Also, earlier this year, the global race to drill and excavate the oldest known layers of Antarctica started, which will potentially allow researchers to gaze in a time when warmer climate and the planet's hotter future determine the future.
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