Mile High and Minus-30

A team of shivering scientists goes to work every day dressed in polar work suits, multiple hats and felt-lined boots made for sub-freezing temperatures. They are the curators and ice specialists at the National Ice Core Lab in the mile-high city of Denver, Colorado.

Their “offices” are refrigerated labs and storerooms kept at a chilly minus-36-degrees Celsius (-33-degrees Fahrenheit). The deep freeze protects the precious inventory of ice cores from Greenland, Antarctica, Wyoming and the state of Washington that document ancient atmospheric conditions. “We can get a surprising range of information out of ice cores,” says Lab Manager Todd Hinkley.

The ice library contains more than 10-miles of ice packed into thousands of mailing tubes. Some of the cores date back a million years, all of them are a rich record of climate, temperature and past environmental conditions. “They allow us to get information about the earth’s atmosphere and past climate, how it changed, how it compares with the climate we have now, and information about what the climate is likely to do in the future,” Hinkley says.

The Snow Knows

Paleoclimatologists look to ice for insight on primitive weather, temperature and climate. Frozen in time, the ice is a record of annual changes in precipitation, the earth’s temperature at the time of snowfall, wind strength, trace gases, greenhouse gases and impurities in the air.

Ice Fabric

One part of Curator Geoff Hargreaves’ job is to prepare thin-sliced samples for bubble and crystal research. “The orientation of the crystals gives you an idea of how the ice sheet is moving and the stresses on ice. Bubbles contain ancient air and information on carbon dioxide and methane levels in the past.”

An important piece of the climate puzzle, ice complements data from tree rings, coral reefs and sea floor sediment – helping scientists understand past climate and predict future climate change.

And yes, researchers get cold to the core in the Ice Lab, but it beats a normal office.

Websites:

National Ice Core Lab
National Science Foundation: “New Antarctic Ice Core to Provide Clearest Climate Record Yet”
INSTAAR: Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research