USU geologist examines ‘astonishing’ Cold War relic with ominous implications

LOGAN – A Cold War relic unearthed in a covert military operation half a century ago under the Greenland ice cap has provided what scientists have called “astonishing” and potentially disturbing glimpses into the future of ‘a warming Earth.

An international team of scientists have announced their findings after studying a sample of ice and sediment captured during a drilling operation in the 1960s, then lost and forgotten. It wasn’t until 2017 that scientists rediscovered the sample in a freezer. They have now correlated this evidence with ice cores from other parts of Greenland to reach disturbing conclusions.

Utah State University geologist professor Tammy Rittenour, who played an important role in the studies, called the results “shocking” because they suggest the Greenland ice sheet has undergone a total meltdown. at least twice and is much less stable than scientists previously thought.

If it melts again, Rittenour believes the consequences could be catastrophic for humans around the world.

Along with its scientific value, the Frozen Evidence Saga also contains mind-boggling elements that could have come from a Cold War thriller.

“It’s a cool story in a cold place,” said Rittenour, describing a top-secret 1960s military operation that literally took place inside the ice.

Camp Century: a hidden base with a secret purpose

The Greenland Ice Sheet is an amazing natural phenomenon, a gigantic patch of ice up to 1 mile deep that covers an area more than four times the size of California.

During the Cold War, Pentagon planners decided it was a great place to dig inside and create a military base known as Camp Century. Tunnels and large workspaces were carved out of the ice and covered with snow and ice.

“You could dig a huge bunker under the ice cap and no one would know,” Rittenour said in an interview on the USU campus. “It would be invisible from above.”

The base itself was no secret; CBS presenter Walter Cronkite even went to the ice cap and visited Camp Century in 1960. Military officials have portrayed it as a scientific research site. Its real purpose was a highly classified military secret.

Known as Project Iceworm, the top secret plan was to hide 600 mobile nuclear missiles under the ice and keep them ready for launch if the Cold War with the Soviet Union suddenly turned into a hot war. Eventually, however, the Pentagon abandoned the plan.

“They must have done it,” said Rittenour, “because it was cut in ice and the ceiling kept crumbling.”

Camp Century left a unique piece of evidence for future scientists. In 1966, a huge rig inside the base dug all the way up the ice cap, straight for almost a mile, and even a few feet deeper, into the sediment below.

“They picked it up, looked at it, put it in a freezer and forgot about it,” Rittenour said.

Project Iceworm: clues for future scientists

In 2017, scientists rediscovered sand and ice left in a freezer in Denmark. They were amazed to find fossilized plants at the bottom of the ice core. Rittenour calls it a “treasure trove” of evidence because it shows that the ice cap must have melted completely, twice. Rittenour’s role was to determine how long ago this happened.

.@UStateScienceTammy Rittenour’s been called upon as an expert to help study ice core specimens in doomed 1960s @The American army nuclear launch site in Greenland. #USUResearch#USUAggieshttps://t.co/JV5WDqazOS

– Utah State University (@USUAggies) December 19, 2019

In her dark “Luminescence Lab” on the USU’s innovation campus, she bombarded the sand with lasers to measure its luminescent properties.

“And that tells us how old he is,” she explained. “When he was last exposed to the light.”

Rittenour said scientists previously believed the ice sheet had been stable for perhaps two and a half million years. She said she was “shocked” to find that the sand was last exposed to sunlight less than a million years ago – perhaps much less.

“Maybe it was only half a million or several hundred thousand years ago since the ice sheet melted,” Rittenour said.

She said this implies that the ice sheet might be a little less stable than scientists had assumed and that it might be prone to melting over a relatively short period of time.

Meltdown: “ An urgent problem for the next 50 years ”

The results have implications for the human race that could be catastrophic. Using various clues, including air bubbles from glacial ice around the world, scientists have mapped the increase and decrease in atmospheric carbon dioxide over the past million years. When the CO2 decreased, the ice sheet enlarged. As CO2 increased, glacial ice began to melt. In the modern industrial age, atmospheric data shows a dramatic spike, a seemingly unprecedented increase in carbon dioxide.

“Today (it’s) well outside the natural range of CO2 concentrations,” Rittenour said.

In recent years, the Greenland ice sheet appears to be melting at an accelerating rate. If a full meltdown occurs again, the oceans will rise about 20 to 25 feet – much higher if Antarctica melts too. It threatens the way of life and the lives of hundreds of millions of people in coastal villages, towns and cities around the world.

“If the Greenland ice cap were to melt,” Rittenour said, “all of these coastal areas would be flooded, entire countries would be under water and most of the world’s population would be disturbed.”

The half-century-old ice core doesn’t answer all questions and predict the future. More studies are coming and this secret of the past, once buried under the ice, could tell us a lot about the future of humanity.

“This is not a twenty generation problem,” geoscientist Paul Bierman said in the press release from the University of Vermont study team. “This is an urgent problem for the next 50 years.”

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