Scientists save Arctic ice in race to preserve climate history

PARIS, April 22, (AFP) Scientists have succeeded in saving samples of ancient Arctic ice for analysis in a race against time before it melts away due to climate change, they said this week.

The 8 French, Italian and Norwegian researchers camped in Norway's Svalbard archipelago in March and April, braving storms and mishaps to preserve crucial ice records that can be used to analyse what the Earth's climate looked like in the past and chart the devastating impact human activity is having on it now. The Ice Memory Foundation team extracted three huge tubes of glacier ice on Svalbard. They, like others collected by the 20-year project launched in 2015, will be preserved for future scientific analysis at a research station in Antarctica.

Analysing chemicals in such deep “ice cores” provides valuable data about centuries of past climatic and environmental conditions, long after the original glacier has disappeared. But it is a race to preserve this “ice memory”. Experts warn that as global temperatures rise, meltwater is leaking into ancient ice and risks destroying the geochemical records it contains before scientists can collect the data.

Human-caused carbon emissions have warmed the planet by 1.15 degrees Celsius since industrialisation, powered by fossil fuels, began the 19th century. Studies indicate that the Arctic is warming between 2-4 times faster than the global average. The UN said the world's 40-odd “reference glaciers” -- those for which longterm observations exist -- are more than 26m thinner now on average than in 1970.