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Researchers from the Australian Antarctic Division (AAD) plan to drill three kilometers below the surface of the frozen continent. On September 23, the AAD announced the exercise that will take them deep beneath the thick layers of Antarctic ice. Experts hope to analyze tiny bubbles accumulated in snow and ice for millions of years.
These bubbles could contain clues about climate change, the researchers said.
The glaciologist Tas van Ommen said: "What we are going to do in the next few years is to solve one of the last big problems in climate science.
"We'll see in the ice tiny bubbles that are stuck between the snowflakes in the ice when it's buried.
"These little bubbles are time capsules of the past atmosphere.
"We want to get this ice cream, analyze these time capsules and understand what carbon dioxide produced during this time of about a million years, when the climate changed."
More than a million years ago, the Earth experienced an ice age every 40,000 years. However, during the last million years, an ice age has occurred every 100,000 years.
The researchers do not know why this happened, but by analyzing the carbon dioxide captured in these "time capsules", they will be able to better understand why climate change has occurred.
The research will also give scientists a better idea of what the future climate of the modern world reserves and the lasting damage caused by carbon dioxide to the Earth's atmosphere.
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Mr. van Ommen said, "This change is related to carbon dioxide and changes the rate at which ice ages have worked in the past.
"We need to understand if the CO2 we release into the atmosphere will have long-term consequences for the Earth in the future."
According to a statement from the AAD, technicians "are putting the finishing touches to a" drill head "that will bury 3,000 meters in the Antarctic Ice Sheet to extract the world's oldest continuous ice core."
The drill is made of stainless steel and is able to withstand temperatures of up to -55 ° C, said ADA.
The scientists will be located 1200 km inland from Antarctica and will start drilling for four years starting in 2021.
ADA Director Kim Ellis said, "We send men and women to the most remote extreme environment on the planet.
"It's a really difficult adventure."
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