Deep ice core reveals the scary environmental facts

Recent data from a deep ice core drilled out of the Antarctic permafrost confirm that Carbon dioxide (CO2) levels are considerably higher now than at any time in the last 800,000 years.

Bubbles of air, trapped in 3.2km-long core of frozen snow for hundreds of thousands of years, have disclosed that human activities are changing the composition of the climate in a dangerous manner.

The in-depth analysis of those air bubbles reveals a shocking rate of change in carbon dioxide concentrations and that human activity has dramatically increased levels of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide in the earth's atmosphere.

The East Antarctic core is the longest, deepest ice column yet drilled.

Scientists at the British Antarctic Survey (BAS) in Cambridge have discovered that there have been eight cycles of atmospheric change in the past 800,000 years when carbon dioxide and methane have soared to highest levels.

Eric Wolff, who headed the science team for the European Project for Ice Coring in Antarctica, on Monday said, “It is from air bubbles that we know for sure that carbon dioxide has increased by about 35% in the last 200 years. Before the last 200 years, which man has been influencing, it was pretty steady.”

European project scientists say the ice core’s contents indicate humans could be bringing about dangerous climate changes.

Wolff, speaking at the British Association Festival of Science in the UK, said: " The natural level of carbon dioxide for most of the past 800,000 years has been 180-300 parts per million by volume (ppmv) of air. But today it is at 380 ppmv.” Similarly, methane was never higher than 750 parts per billion (ppb) in this timescale, but now it positions at 1,780 ppb.

"The most scary thing is that carbon dioxide today is not just out of the range of what happened in the last 650,000 years but already 100% out of the range," Wolff added.
The ice core was drilled from a region of the White Continent in Antarctica known as Dome Concordia (Dome C). The core, which has been drilled out by the European Project for Ice Coring in Antarctica (Epica), is nearly 3.2km long and reaches to a depth where air bubbles became trapped in ice that formed 800,000 years ago.

The ice core data indicated that it used to take nearly 1,000 years for a carbon dioxide increase of 30 ppmv. And, shockingly, it has increased by that much in the past 17 years alone. "The rate of change is probably the most scary thing because it means that the Earth systems can't cope with it," Dr. said.

"We really are in a situation where something is happening that we don't have any analogue for in our records. It is an experiment that we don't know the result of," he said.