A basic view of snowcapped mountains and the arctic ocean on the coast of Svalbard close to Longyearbyen, Norway, April 5, 2023.
| Photo Credit: Reuters
Scientists have succeeded in saving samples of ancient Arctic ice for evaluation in a race towards time earlier than it melts away due to climate change, they stated this week.
The eight French, Italian and Norwegian researchers camped in Norway’s Svalbard archipelago in March and April, braving storms and mishaps to preserve essential ice data that can be utilized to analyse what the Earth’s climate appeared like in the previous and chart the devastating affect human exercise is having on it now.
The Ice Memory Foundation crew extracted three large tubes of glacier ice on Svalbard. They, like others collected by the 20-year undertaking launched in 2015, can be preserved for future scientific evaluation at a analysis station in Antarctica.
Analysing chemical compounds in such deep “ice cores” supplies precious information about centuries of previous climatic and environmental situations, lengthy after the unique glacier has disappeared.
But it’s a race to preserve this “ice memory”. Experts warn that as international temperatures rise, meltwater is leaking into ancient ice and dangers destroying the geochemical data it accommodates earlier than scientists can gather the information.
When the Ice Memory crew arrange camp in March on Holtedahlfonna, one of many highest and most northerly glaciers in the Arctic, the primary hitch was the climate.
Instead of the anticipated -25 levels Celsius, fierce winds pressured the temperature down to -40C, delaying drilling for a number of days.
Then, as soon as that they had bored a 24.5-metre (80-foot) gap in the ice, water from the melting glacier rushed into it.
Even although radar information collected since 2005 confirmed there was some meltwater contained in the Holtedalhfonna glacier, “we did not expect to find such an extended, abundant and saturated aquifer in the selected drilling site, at the end of winter”, defined Jean-Charles Gallet, snow physicist on the Norwegian Polar Institute and expedition coordinator.
“Glaciers are not only dramatically losing their mass but also their cold content.”
‘Dramatic climate change’
Aquifers are underground reservoirs of freshwater or saltwater that permeate the ice crystals in glaciers and weaken them.
“Seeing all that water in the glacier gave us the clearest evidence yet of the effects that dramatic climate change is having in the Arctic,” stated Daniele Zannoni, a member of the crew from the Ca’ Foscari University in Venice.
Human-caused carbon emissions have warmed the planet by 1.15 levels Celsius since industrialisation, powered by fossil fuels, started the nineteenth century. Studies point out that the Arctic is warming between two and 4 instances sooner than the worldwide common.
On Friday, the United Nations stated the world’s 40-odd “reference glaciers” — these for which long-term observations exist — are greater than 26 metres thinner now on common than in 1970.
The strain of the soften water speeding into the Holtedalhfonna drill gap broken two of the crew’s driller motors, forcing them to relocate to the summit of the Dovrebreen glacier, 13 metres increased up.
When drilling resumed, the researchers succeeded in extracting three ice cores 50-75 metres lengthy. The strata and air bubbles trapped in these valuable translucent cylinders, only a dozen centimetres in diameter, may comprise up to 300 years of climate history.
Race towards time
The race is on for glaciologists, who “are seeing their primary material disappear forever from the surface of the planet”, Jerome Chappellaz, president of the Ice Memory basis, advised AFP on April 3.
“It is our responsibility as glaciologists of this generation to make sure a bit of it is preserved.”
When the researchers had three ice samples, the temperature in Svalbard shot up to -3C, turning a part of the route again to their base on the Ny-Alesund analysis station right into a treacherous torrent of water.
Two of the ice cores made it base however the third continues to be caught on the drilling web site, ready for extra clement climate to be shipped out.
In the meantime, Ice Memory has put out a world plea to different researchers.
“We do need (them)… rapidly to collect samples from endangered glaciers or to save… already collected ice cores, to preserve these very precious data in the Ice Memory sanctuary in Antarctica,” stated paleoclimatologist and Ice Memory vice-chair Carlo Barbante.
“If we lose archives like this, we will lose the memory of human alteration of the climate,” careworn Ice Memory director Anne-Catherine Ohlmann.
“We will also lose crucial information for future scientists and policymakers, who will have to make decisions for the well-being of society.”
