Ice Core

ice core, long cylinder of glacial ice recovered by drilling through glaciers in Greenland, Antarctica, and high mountains around the world. Scientists retrieve these cores to look for records of climate change over the last 100,000 years or more. Ice cores were begun in the 1960s to complement other climatological studies based on deep-sea cores, lake sediments, and tree-ring studies (dendrochronology). Since then, they have revealed previously unknown details of atmospheric composition, temperature, and abrupt changes in climate. Such changes include “flickers” that appear to occur in periods lasting only 3 to 10 years—much more quickly than the traditional view of the pace of climate shifts. Abrupt changes are of great concern for those who model future changes in climate and their potential impacts on society.

Ice cores record millennia of ancient snowfalls, which gradually turned to crystalline glacier ice. In areas of high accumulation, such as low-latitude mountain glaciers and the Greenland Ice Sheet, annual layers of ice representing tens of thousands of years can be seen and counted, often with the unaided eye.