Six-million-year-old ice discovered in Antarctica offers unprecedented window into a warmer Earth

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1. Cool article! Relevant info below

   > The trapped air in these new cores allows scientists to directly date the ice through careful measurements of an isotope of the noble gas argon. Direct dating means scientists measured things in the ice itself that indicate age rather than making an inference based on an associated feature or deposit.

   >Although the records from this old ice are not continuous, their antiquity is unprecedented, the researchers said. By dating many samples, Higgins explained, “the team has built up a library of what we call ‘climate snapshots’ roughly six times older than any previously reported ice core data, complementing the more detailed younger data from cores in the interior of Antarctica.”

   >Temperature records from measurements of oxygen isotopes in the ice reveal that this area experienced a gradual, long-term cooling of about 12 degrees Celsius, approximately 22 degrees Fahrenheit. This is the first direct measure of the amount of cooling in Antarctica over the last 6 million years.

   >Ongoing research into these ice cores seeks to reconstruct levels of atmospheric greenhouse gases and ocean heat content, which have important implications for understanding the causes of natural climate change.

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