A nearly two-mile ice core extracted from Antarctica's ice sheet contains what is likely the world's oldest ice, estimated to have formed over 1 million years ago. The extensive ice core—which is longer than eight Eiffel Towers—is expected to shed light on the timeline of ice age cycles on Earth and reveal connections between the planet's temperature and atmospheric conditions.
Researchers with the European-funded team of 16 scientists drilled at the remote site over the course of four summers at temperatures nearing minus 30 degrees Fahrenheit. As snow falls and freezes on the continental ice sheet (see diagram), it solidifies layer upon layer of ice and effectively traps samples of the atmosphere over millennia, including air, particles, and even viruses. The ice then becomes a historical record of Earth's climate shifts. Learn how ice cores work here.
A previous, slightly shorter ice core extracted by the group demonstrated heat-trapping greenhouse gas levels over the last 800,000 years never reached the amounts seen since the Industrial Revolution.
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