Ice cores

An ice core is a core sample that is typically removed from an ice sheet, most commonly from the polar ice caps of Antarctica, Greenland or from high mountain glaciers elsewhere. As the ice forms from the incremental buildup of annual layers of snow, lower layers are older than upper, and an ice core contains ice formed over a range of years. The properties of the ice and the recrystallized inclusions within the ice can then be used to reconstruct a climatic record over the age range of the core, normally through isotopic analysis. This enables the reconstruction of local temperature records and the history of atmospheric composition.

Ice cores contain an abundance of information about climate. Inclusions in the snow of each year remain in the ice, such as wind-blown dust, ash, pollen, bubbles of atmospheric gas and radioactive substances. The variety of climatic proxies is greater than in any other natural recorder of climate, such as tree rings or sediment layers. These include (proxies for) temperature, ocean volume, precipitation, chemistry and gas composition of the lower atmosphere, volcanic eruptions, solar variability, sea-surface productivity, desert extent and forest fires.

The length of the record depends on the depth of the ice core and varies from a few years up to 800 kyr (800,000 years) for the EPICA core. The time resolution (i.e. the shortest time period which can be accurately distinguished) depends on the amount of annual snowfall, and reduces with depth as the ice compacts under the weight of layers accumulating on top of it. Upper layers of ice in a core correspond to a single year or sometimes a single season. Deeper into the ice the layers thin and annual layers become indistinguishable.

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