The new Antarctic drilling plan that can be the key against climate change

Until now, specialists have not found samples providing concrete evidence on the mechanisms of climate change in such an ancient time. Eisen, researcher of the Alfred Wegener Institute German, he advanced in the dialogue with ambito.com that the main discovery that they could get is "The composition of the atmosphere in terms of greenhouse gases, mainly carbon dioxide and methane".

Especially, during the transition between the ice cycles of the Middle Pleistocene period, many questions still await specialists. "It is necessary to understand these processes in the Earth's climate system, we do not fully understand what led to the transition and the changes of the glacial and interglacial periods", he added.

The delay was marked by the first European Antarctic ice-removal project (European Antarctic ice coring project o EPICA), which obtained ice samples 800,000 years old.

From 1996 to 2004, researchers drilled the Antarctic soil and reconstructed the climate history of that time. Every inch of the frozen core counts: one meter long contains ten thousand years of climatic history. At the same time, They were able to measure the concentrations of the main greenhouse gases contained in small air bubbles trapped in icy water.. The links they found were clear: when the climate of the planet was cold, there was a considerably lower amount of carbon dioxide and methane in the air only in the warmer periods.

The project will involve 10 countries: Italy, France, Germany, United Kingdom, Switzerland, Denmark, Belgium, Norway, Sweden and the Netherlandswhich during three Antarctic summers, from mid-November to early February, will drill at a depth of 2,730 meters to find the precious ice of a million and a half years.

The selected point, after a series of flights during which a radar was used to badyze the ice sheets below the surface, It's one of the driest places on the planet, where the average annual temperature is 54.5 ° below zero. This site offers good resolution in the samples and the badurance that there is no risk of melting despite the heat flux from the inside of the planet.

"The drilling will cost about 30 million euros and funding will start in June.The first logistic campaign in Antarctica will take place between 2019/20 and the drilling season will begin between 2021 and 2022", detailed Eisen.

Initial data of ice core badyzes should be available by 2025, which will enable the international scientific community to start a new chapter in the fight against climate change.