November 25, 2024 • 19 mins
Ice cores allow scientists to reconstruct climate conditions far into the past. Peter Neff, an assistant professor in the University of Minnesota Department of Soil, Water, and Climate, discusses the process of collecting ice cores, how data is obtained from them and what the past may teach us about the future.
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(00:03):
This is the Discovery Files podcastfrom the U.S.
National Science Foundation.
And the coldest parts of the world,it is possible to dig deep down
into the glacial ice and collect samples,potentially going back millions of years.
Ice cores offer researchersa unique opportunity
to access environmental datathat has been trapped for many years.
(00:24):
Broadening our understandingof Earth system
conditions from ice age cyclesthrough the current human impacts.
We're joined by glaciologist Peter Neff,assistant professor in the Department
of Soil, Water and Climateat the University of Minnesota.
Professor Neff,thank you for joining me today.
Yeah, thanks for having me.
For people that don't know whatwe're going to be talking about today.
What are ice coresand why are they interesting?
(00:46):
Ice cores are core samples that we drillfrom glaciers all around the world,
in the polar regionsespecially, but also high mountain areas.
They're really interestingbecause in best case,
you can have annual accumulationsof snowfall
that eventually get compressed into icethat are just like the rings of a tree.
And the chemistry of that snowand the impurities in it,
(01:08):
and also air bubbles that get trapped inthe ice, are all different
archives of past climateand environmental information.
They give us really important context,sort of understanding, longer
time series of very little historythan we have from our modern observations.
And yeah, really provide us
a lot of really important informationas we look to the future.
So the project
that brought your work to my attentioncurrently is something called Cold Acts.
(01:31):
Can you tell us what cold is orwhat collects is trying to achieve?
Codex is a National ScienceFoundation Science and technology center.
In the class of 2021,I think was when we started and it's a big
like 15 institution collaborationto try to find the oldest ice
core records of past climatein Antarctica, specifically
(01:52):
with sort of two goals of,sort of using geophysical tools,
both from the air and on the groundin Antarctica to find potential deep
drilling sites where we coulddrill, 1.5 mile deep ice core.
That would be 1.5 million years oldand at the same time
go to really interesting placeson the margin of the ice sheets,
where old ice is actually broughtto the surface by ice floe.
(02:13):
So places like the Allen Hills,where a lot of old meteorites
are found because of the waythe ice flows to the surface
and concentrate old meteorites.
But also we're finding that that iceis incredibly old and gives us snapshots
that go way back further in timethan the continuous ice core record does,
which is only 800,000 yearslong right now.
You mentioned kind of some of the elementsthat are inside the cores.
(02:36):
Can you talk about what you'respecifically looking for in the ice cores?
A whole host of things.
So ice is a really nice, cleansort of sampling environment to work with.
So rather than sediment cores or treerings where things can get pretty messy,
we in an ice sample can measure just aboutany chemical element you can think of.
(02:56):
So you can measure salts in the ice,
which might tell you about variabilityin storminess or ocean conditions.
We measure isotopes of hydrogenand oxygen in the ice itself.
And that details about temperaturefluctuations.
But, you know, the most directand fascinating thing about ice cores
and particularly Antarcticice cores is these air bubbles
you get trapped insidethat is almost perfectly preserved.
(03:18):
Air bubblesare just little samples of the atmosphere.
So we can measure carbon dioxide, methane,nitrous oxide,
these really important heattrapping greenhouse gases.
And we can measure those back in time.
Well, before we started to observe thosethings in the atmosphere in the 1950s.
And that's one of the big ticketitems for coal decks, is these old ice
samples in the Antarcticare the only place in the world
(03:39):
where you actually have CO2 preservedand unaltered in those air bubbles.
And so we're really tryingto get more snapshots of that from places
like the Allen Hillsthat are going to give us
a better, longer senseof how Earth's climate system works.
Thinking about that trapped air,I know in 2018 or 2019,
you had a project where you were meltingice cores on location to study later.
(03:59):
Can you talk a little bitabout that process?
Yeah,I mean, the ideal case with ice cores
is that we go to Antarctica or the Arcticor Mount Glacier to collect the core
and then bring it home to the labto do our analysis and, you know,
do things like put a small ice samplein a vacuum chamber, melted down,
or crush it to then release that old airand bring it into an instrument.
(04:20):
But there are some projects,like the 20 1819 season.
I was a postdoctoral researcherat the University of Rochester,
working with Bass Petrenko on a projecthe was leading and where we went
all the way down to Antarctica.
I think we had about110 days in the field, and because we were
measuring a really,really precise thing in the gases,
we actually had to melt downand extract that air
(04:42):
in Antarctica and actually haveone of the snowiest sites in Antarctica.
So if you can imagine, you know,keeping a bunch of scientific equipment
running in a snowstorm and you got to keepyour generators from getting clogged
with snow, you're getting buried aliveand it's sort of a shack we had with this
300 liter melting chamberI call the hot tub time Machine.
(05:02):
It was a very clean vacuum chamberthat we could put a couple hundred
kilos of ice intoand then melt it down in a big, hot water
bath to extract that old airso that it wouldn't get contaminated.
And we were actually trying to measurenot just carbon monoxide in that air,
but the radio carbon concentrationof carbon monoxide in that air,
(05:24):
which is a tracer forfor how oxidation works in the atmosphere,
a really important process that removes
greenhouse gaseslike methane from the atmosphere.
So yeah, we go to some pretty wackylengths to get really high
quality samples in Antarctica.
So I have much preferredjust collecting cores in Antarctica.
That's hard enough.
And then bring them home for the analysis.
But of course, shippinga whole bunch of ice
from Antarctica all the way back tothe United States is also
(05:46):
quitean expensive and complicated affair.
Was that logistic aspect of itwhy it was done on site there?
Radio carbon accumulates in iceat the surface of the Earth,
so once you take your icecore out of the ice sheet, it's
no longer shielded
from some of the high energy particlesthat are coming from outer space.
Is cosmic rays.
Ice actually produces radio carbon,but once you remove
(06:09):
the air from the ice, you get less of thatextra production of radio carbon.
And so that sort of dictated
that once the chords were on the surface,they were essentially hot potatoes
that were becomingmore and more contaminated.
So we had to get the air out of the ice.
And in the end, you're then shipping home20 or 30 stainless steel sample canisters
that, yes, you have
particular needs for how they're shipped,but they're not going to melt.
(06:30):
But we did have the stipulationwith those as well
that they actually couldn'tgo back to the United States on aircraft
because if you take the sampleshigh in the atmosphere,
there's again,less shielding from these cosmic rays.
And so the sampleswould get it more contaminated.
So they went all the wayback to the states on vessels.
Thinking about the ice coresthat do make it back to the lab.
What's your process onceyou have them in a controlled environment?
(06:50):
Kind of what is the research steps?
I guess, you.
Know, there are a couple of phasesto the arc of an ice core project.
And firstyou have to find a glacier and a site
where you think you can getgood annual accumulations of ice.
So there's ice core recovery,getting out there
with drills, drilling the coresand shipping them back to the lab.
And then in the lab.
You know, there are sort of differentspecialties in what we would measure.
(07:12):
So if you need to do gas analyzes,
you need to have the right equipmentfor that or collaborators for that.
And you also have differentneeds for the temperature of your ice.
You know, you can only do that at sitesthat are very cold.
And then you need to keep your coursecold all the way back home.
And I have two other projectswhere we're working on
reconstructions of the last, say,200 years.
And so then you want annual informationover that time.
(07:34):
So we're measuring things like the waterstable isotopes with laser spectroscopy,
measuring salts or, you know, leadto sea contamination in the environment.
We also trying
to measure sulfur compoundswhich are going to give you in Antarctica.
We'll give you an annual signal
in how the ocean freezes over every winterand then melts every summer.
(07:55):
But also you get big sulfur peaksfrom tropical volcanic eruptions,
which are in the historical period,very well dated.
You know,
we know the day that Tambora erupted,we know the day that Krakatoa erupted.
So we try to find those in the coresto have an absolute age to die to.
So that's one of the important thingsabout these continuous ice core records
is that dating, we you know,we have dating with uncertainty
(08:16):
on the order of 1 to 3 years for the last,
you know, several hundred yearseven extending to thousands of years.
And that's because of that combinedannual chemical signals in the core,
and then also tying to sulfur peaksfrom volcanic eruptions.
So there's sort of a whole host of thingsto measure.
And it tends to take a villageat that stage,
you know, onePi will collect the ice core,
(08:37):
and then we'll go to the USand international ice
core community and say,hey, we got this ice.
Now I need to partner with a few folksto to make all the measurements.
And it's just sort of
what stage of the ice core life cycleyou're sort of working in.
I'm very muchin the ice core recovery stage of things.
It and then this part of my careerand you know, now I do have 2 or 3
ice cores of my own that I need to now
(08:58):
shepherd through that analysisand then interpretation phase.
And yeah, so we'll spend it, spend100 days in Antarctica collecting samples.
But then we'll also spend 100 daysin a basement lab,
you know, getting our samplesjust in the right state to
then be be fully analyzedin a, in a mass spectrometer
or laser spectroscope or whateverthese pieces of equipment we have.
(09:19):
So and then of course, as well. Right.
Once you then you turn this beautifulice core sample, you know, we destroy it
in the analysis process and it becomesjust ones and zeros, just digital data.
Then PhD students and postdocsget to have all the fun with it.
And then actually interpreting,okay, what do these signals mean.
And then once you establishthat proxy relationship you can
then push it back in time.And that's where yeah, we get to do
(09:40):
the sort of cooltime travel with ice cores.
If there's a place in Antarcticathat's really critical,
that's changing fast,like like Thwaites Glacier,
and we have no climate recordsin that region.
But thankfully with the,you know, ice there
and the particular siteswe have on the coast,
you know, we were able to say, hey,we have an opportunity there.
You know, these
these sites have been recording thatclimate information for time immemorial.
(10:01):
And we just have to go thereand collect our core sample.
Thinking about that field work.
Like, I'd love to
have you go through what it takesto get to a location like that.
So yeah, it takes I know a lot of people.
It's a huge collaboration.
And, you know, we're very lucky, you know?
So most of my work centers in Antarcticaand I've most often gone on projects
that are at least co-funded by the USNational Science Foundation.
(10:24):
And we as Americans are incredibly luckyto have this, this human
and physical infrastructure in Antarcticathat gives us, you know, the greatest
logistical capability down thereof any national Antarctic program.
You know, McMurdo station is abouta thousand people in the summertime.
You know,the next biggest station is South
Pole Station,which is 150 people in the summertime.
(10:44):
Any other research stationis much smaller than that.
So we sort of start with that bigger,a broader base of support,
and that allows us to get flown outto the middle of nowhere.
All these placeswe need to go to learn about,
you know, how the Earth system operates.
And, you know, back over the last100,000, 10,000
and even hundredsof thousands of years ago.
So, you know, it's just it'slike a huge chain of, of experts,
(11:09):
you know, the logistics experts,if we can get us moving
even from the US to New Zealand,where we then catch US Air Force flights
from New Zealand to McMurdo station,and then you're working with Canadian
bush pilots to fly out from McMurdoto the Allen Hills, or to to waste of air.
These places where we're collectingice cores, all of those things
come with a huge, pyramid of support beneath them.
(11:30):
So everybody in the programis super essential to getting it all done.
And it's the same, you know, inthe icebreaker context, whether you're on
a US research vesselthat than the saying it'd be Palmer or,
I had the pleasure of being invitedon the South Korean icebreaker Iran.
And then in that case as well,
you know, we have two helicopterson that research vessel
which allow us as as Glacier peopleto get off the ship and onto the ice.
(11:54):
And then even thoughwe were very restricted on time,
you know, we did all of our workfor this project in 13 days.
We had off the ship to absolutely race.
And you know,how deep can we drill in 13 days?
And we set ourselvesa target of 150m deep and hit the magic
hundred and 50 meter number,and everything went off without a hitch.
But certainly,
you know, in any of these projects,there's a heck of a lot more things
(12:17):
that can go wrong than can go right.
So it's just a huge balancing effortof that capability to get way out there
and get the samples and the understandingthat we need, but also mitigating risk
at every single step.
I'd be hard pressed to find a bigger fan
of the US Antarctic programin any national Antarctic program than me.
I think it's just amazing what we're able
to do down therein such a challenging environment.
(12:37):
I think I've been to Antarcticamaybe seven times now.
It's such an intense human experience.
That sort of builds, you know,as you're moving towards your goal.
And so you reallythere's a lot of conversations
you can have as well around that.
As things get more and more real,
you tend to get more and more connectedas a team as well.
And yeah, you come out of it having hadthis huge, overwhelming experience
(12:57):
and, you know, hopefully all of that,what you needed to do came off well.
You know, once you've been puttingyour head down for five, six, seven weeks
and to get that drilling targetor drill to bedrock, the sense
of of accomplishment and reliefwhen when you do set a goal,
you know, I was on a drilling project,my PhD, with the New Zealand
Antarctic Program, where we were drilling760m to bedrock and, you know,
(13:21):
you're just charging to to get it doneand be as efficient as possible.
And then once you finally,you know, hit the bedrock, you get to see
the bottom ofof that part of the Antarctic ice sheet.
And then you get that release like, oh,we did it.
You know, never mind the factthat, you know, you've done it,
but then you have another month of work toto get everything packed up,
get back to station, get stuff back to, to the real world.
(13:44):
So it's just an intense place, andit's such a departure from normal life.
Yeah, certainly.
You know, then then getting these samplesback as well.
You know, we haven't been able to workwith the cores
that we collectedon the pre and vessel yet.
It's been almost a year.
But you know, getting
getting funding and equipmentin place to do the analysis is difficult.
But you know for me
knowing the informationis likely contained in those cores
(14:05):
and then being able to extractthat is is super exciting.
And particularly that one,
because it was my first NSFproject as lead Pi in Antarctic.
And it was,
you know, it's really the dream projectthat that I've been pursuing
for my whole career.
So it's really gratifyingto work with folks and have support
from the NSF to go dothose really wild new ideas.
(14:27):
So one of the other thingsthat you've had some success with is,
social mediacommunicating your experiences there.
Can you talk a little bitabout what that has meant,
what difference that has made,what the reactions have been?
Yeah, I've been really lucky to enjoysome pretty wide exposure through TikTok,
particularlybecause of that very visual platform
(14:48):
and how engaging Antarctica ison, on camera.
It's a very lucky combinationto to draw people in with the excitement
of going to Antarctica and snakesand science, and at the same time,
it's been a really helpful wayfor me to sort of process
some of those aspectsof doing Antarctic field work
that you just can't share with peopleor people don't get to see.
(15:08):
So it's sort ofI mean, it's like a portal for the public.
Yeah.
So social media has been a great wayto show people what we do down there.
I think people are pretty surprised
at the amount of thingswe're doing in Antarctica.
And you see these big pieces of equipmentlike big National Coast Guard icebreaker
that comes in to resupply McMurdoevery season like that ship exists
to support the US Antarctic program.
(15:29):
That's it's one job, and it's really coolto see these things in action.
I'm able to give peoplea really direct view,
and I become pretty good, I guessnow, over the years of working with
camera equipmentthat you need to capture this stuff, well,
like we're very luckynow that the only camera equipment
I need is an iPhone that I can keep nearmy body to keep it warm in Antarctica,
and then documenta little pieces of what we're doing,
(15:51):
you know, as, as we're doing it.
And, you know, even as I'm leading it,
I started to be able to figure outhow to get just the right snippets to
then be able to to show people visuallyhow we get fieldwork done, particularly.
So, I mean, I have a very fieldworkheavy portfolio right now.
And and so that's what people get to see.And on social media.
And it is a more of a challengeto feature,
you know,all of the really incredible detail,
(16:13):
precise lab work that we then need to doto to translate that core sample
into scientific informationand knowledge for us all to benefit from.
But trying to keep up the creativityas we move through that process and,
you know, show them what we do.
Like when our cores come back to
the States while they go to the NSFIce Core facility in Denver, Colorado.
And that's a really fascinating placeto to go with the camera,
(16:35):
to see these core samples
that are in hundreds of thousandsor even millions of years old
and be able to, you know, look at themand talk to the curators about them.
So that's sort of the next stepfor for some of these projects.
It's a real unique opportunityto look at the past.
The last question I have for
you today is thinking about the futureand your work in the years ahead.
What are you most excited
(16:56):
about finding out from those coresyou haven't got to look at yet?
Yeah, I mean, we really want to understandhow the climate
in these critical regions of WestAntarctica, a place called the Amundsen
Sea, is sort of home to the most fastchanging glaciers in Antarctica.
And we have really no observationalclimate information in that region.
(17:17):
There are no researchstations. It's a really stormy coastline.
And so ice coresare the only way for us to get context
of the last hundred years or 150 years.
And it's just a really fun, basic exerciseof filling in blank spaces
on the map as well.
We have a lot of icecores from inland West Antarctica
that were collected by NSF projectsin the late 1990s, early 2000.
(17:38):
So we have nothing from right out
on the coast, rightwhere all of the change is happening.
The change in glaciers in Antarcticais largely being forced by the ocean,
and the atmosphere also has a role.
So since we call it ice, oceanatmosphere interactions, super complex,
three systems interacting, all of whichare highly variable in time and in space.
And so we need observations.
(17:59):
And these ice cores
are one tool in the toolkit that we haveof observing the glacier systems.
Now with geophysical toolsand getting out there on the ice.
But we don't really have a wayto gain information about Thwaites
Glacier back in time through anythingbut ice cores.
Certainly at thatthe resolution that we have.
So year by year information,you know, we have a general feeling
(18:20):
that some of the retreat of these glacierswas initiated
in the 1940sdue to the strong El Nino event.
I think with these covers,we can take them back to 1940
and say, well, this is how anomaloustemperature was in 1940.
This is how anomalousthe winds were in 1941, in 1942,
and really firm up that hypothesisof that initiation of this big,
(18:43):
globally relevant retreatof these glaciers that we're we're worried
is is irreversible and could happenfaster than is ideal for a society.
We know the glaciers are going to continueto change.
We don't know how much sea level risethey're going to be sending our way,
and we don't know how fast.
So we're really trying to gainbetter clarity on that.
And ice coresare going to be a great addition
in all the different waysof being able to do that.
(19:04):
Special thanks to Peter Neff.
For The Discovery Files, I'm Nate Pottker.
You can watch video versions
of these conversations on our YouTubechannel by searching @NSFscience.
Please subscribe wherever you get podcastsand if you like our program,
share it with a friendand consider leaving a review.
Discover how the U.S.
National Science Foundationis advancing research at NSF.gov.
This is the Discovery Files podcastfrom the U.S.
National Science Foundation.
And the coldest parts of the world,it is possible to dig deep down
into the glacial ice and collect samples,potentially going back millions of years.
Ice cores offer researchersa unique opportunity
to access environmental datathat has been trapped for many years.
(00:24):
Broadening our understandingof Earth system
conditions from ice age cyclesthrough the current human impacts.
We're joined by glaciologist Peter Neff,assistant professor in the Department
of Soil, Water and Climateat the University of Minnesota.
Professor Neff,thank you for joining me today.
Yeah, thanks for having me.
For people that don't know whatwe're going to be talking about today.
What are ice coresand why are they interesting?
(00:46):
Ice cores are core samples that we drillfrom glaciers all around the world,
in the polar regionsespecially, but also high mountain areas.
They're really interestingbecause in best case,
you can have annual accumulationsof snowfall
that eventually get compressed into icethat are just like the rings of a tree.
And the chemistry of that snowand the impurities in it,
(01:08):
and also air bubbles that get trapped inthe ice, are all different
archives of past climateand environmental information.
They give us really important context,sort of understanding, longer
time series of very little historythan we have from our modern observations.
And yeah, really provide us
a lot of really important informationas we look to the future.
So the project
that brought your work to my attentioncurrently is something called Cold Acts.
(01:31):
Can you tell us what cold is orwhat collects is trying to achieve?
Codex is a National ScienceFoundation Science and technology center.
In the class of 2021,I think was when we started and it's a big
like 15 institution collaborationto try to find the oldest ice
core records of past climatein Antarctica, specifically
(01:52):
with sort of two goals of,sort of using geophysical tools,
both from the air and on the groundin Antarctica to find potential deep
drilling sites where we coulddrill, 1.5 mile deep ice core.
That would be 1.5 million years oldand at the same time
go to really interesting placeson the margin of the ice sheets,
where old ice is actually broughtto the surface by ice floe.
(02:13):
So places like the Allen Hills,where a lot of old meteorites
are found because of the waythe ice flows to the surface
and concentrate old meteorites.
But also we're finding that that iceis incredibly old and gives us snapshots
that go way back further in timethan the continuous ice core record does,
which is only 800,000 yearslong right now.
You mentioned kind of some of the elementsthat are inside the cores.
(02:36):
Can you talk about what you'respecifically looking for in the ice cores?
A whole host of things.
So ice is a really nice, cleansort of sampling environment to work with.
So rather than sediment cores or treerings where things can get pretty messy,
we in an ice sample can measure just aboutany chemical element you can think of.
(02:56):
So you can measure salts in the ice,
which might tell you about variabilityin storminess or ocean conditions.
We measure isotopes of hydrogenand oxygen in the ice itself.
And that details about temperaturefluctuations.
But, you know, the most directand fascinating thing about ice cores
and particularly Antarcticice cores is these air bubbles
you get trapped insidethat is almost perfectly preserved.
(03:18):
Air bubblesare just little samples of the atmosphere.
So we can measure carbon dioxide, methane,nitrous oxide,
these really important heattrapping greenhouse gases.
And we can measure those back in time.
Well, before we started to observe thosethings in the atmosphere in the 1950s.
And that's one of the big ticketitems for coal decks, is these old ice
samples in the Antarcticare the only place in the world
(03:39):
where you actually have CO2 preservedand unaltered in those air bubbles.
And so we're really tryingto get more snapshots of that from places
like the Allen Hillsthat are going to give us
a better, longer senseof how Earth's climate system works.
Thinking about that trapped air,I know in 2018 or 2019,
you had a project where you were meltingice cores on location to study later.
(03:59):
Can you talk a little bitabout that process?
Yeah,I mean, the ideal case with ice cores
is that we go to Antarctica or the Arcticor Mount Glacier to collect the core
and then bring it home to the labto do our analysis and, you know,
do things like put a small ice samplein a vacuum chamber, melted down,
or crush it to then release that old airand bring it into an instrument.
(04:20):
But there are some projects,like the 20 1819 season.
I was a postdoctoral researcherat the University of Rochester,
working with Bass Petrenko on a projecthe was leading and where we went
all the way down to Antarctica.
I think we had about110 days in the field, and because we were
measuring a really,really precise thing in the gases,
we actually had to melt downand extract that air
(04:42):
in Antarctica and actually haveone of the snowiest sites in Antarctica.
So if you can imagine, you know,keeping a bunch of scientific equipment
running in a snowstorm and you got to keepyour generators from getting clogged
with snow, you're getting buried aliveand it's sort of a shack we had with this
300 liter melting chamberI call the hot tub time Machine.
(05:02):
It was a very clean vacuum chamberthat we could put a couple hundred
kilos of ice intoand then melt it down in a big, hot water
bath to extract that old airso that it wouldn't get contaminated.
And we were actually trying to measurenot just carbon monoxide in that air,
but the radio carbon concentrationof carbon monoxide in that air,
(05:24):
which is a tracer forfor how oxidation works in the atmosphere,
a really important process that removes
greenhouse gaseslike methane from the atmosphere.
So yeah, we go to some pretty wackylengths to get really high
quality samples in Antarctica.
So I have much preferredjust collecting cores in Antarctica.
That's hard enough.
And then bring them home for the analysis.
But of course, shippinga whole bunch of ice
from Antarctica all the way back tothe United States is also
(05:46):
quitean expensive and complicated affair.
Was that logistic aspect of itwhy it was done on site there?
Radio carbon accumulates in iceat the surface of the Earth,
so once you take your icecore out of the ice sheet, it's
no longer shielded
from some of the high energy particlesthat are coming from outer space.
Is cosmic rays.
Ice actually produces radio carbon,but once you remove
(06:09):
the air from the ice, you get less of thatextra production of radio carbon.
And so that sort of dictated
that once the chords were on the surface,they were essentially hot potatoes
that were becomingmore and more contaminated.
So we had to get the air out of the ice.
And in the end, you're then shipping home20 or 30 stainless steel sample canisters
that, yes, you have
particular needs for how they're shipped,but they're not going to melt.
(06:30):
But we did have the stipulationwith those as well
that they actually couldn'tgo back to the United States on aircraft
because if you take the sampleshigh in the atmosphere,
there's again,less shielding from these cosmic rays.
And so the sampleswould get it more contaminated.
So they went all the wayback to the states on vessels.
Thinking about the ice coresthat do make it back to the lab.
What's your process onceyou have them in a controlled environment?
(06:50):
Kind of what is the research steps?
I guess, you.
Know, there are a couple of phasesto the arc of an ice core project.
And firstyou have to find a glacier and a site
where you think you can getgood annual accumulations of ice.
So there's ice core recovery,getting out there
with drills, drilling the coresand shipping them back to the lab.
And then in the lab.
You know, there are sort of differentspecialties in what we would measure.
(07:12):
So if you need to do gas analyzes,
you need to have the right equipmentfor that or collaborators for that.
And you also have differentneeds for the temperature of your ice.
You know, you can only do that at sitesthat are very cold.
And then you need to keep your coursecold all the way back home.
And I have two other projectswhere we're working on
reconstructions of the last, say,200 years.
And so then you want annual informationover that time.
(07:34):
So we're measuring things like the waterstable isotopes with laser spectroscopy,
measuring salts or, you know, leadto sea contamination in the environment.
We also trying
to measure sulfur compoundswhich are going to give you in Antarctica.
We'll give you an annual signal
in how the ocean freezes over every winterand then melts every summer.
(07:55):
But also you get big sulfur peaksfrom tropical volcanic eruptions,
which are in the historical period,very well dated.
You know,
we know the day that Tambora erupted,we know the day that Krakatoa erupted.
So we try to find those in the coresto have an absolute age to die to.
So that's one of the important thingsabout these continuous ice core records
is that dating, we you know,we have dating with uncertainty
(08:16):
on the order of 1 to 3 years for the last,
you know, several hundred yearseven extending to thousands of years.
And that's because of that combinedannual chemical signals in the core,
and then also tying to sulfur peaksfrom volcanic eruptions.
So there's sort of a whole host of thingsto measure.
And it tends to take a villageat that stage,
you know, onePi will collect the ice core,
(08:37):
and then we'll go to the USand international ice
core community and say,hey, we got this ice.
Now I need to partner with a few folksto to make all the measurements.
And it's just sort of
what stage of the ice core life cycleyou're sort of working in.
I'm very muchin the ice core recovery stage of things.
It and then this part of my careerand you know, now I do have 2 or 3
ice cores of my own that I need to now
(08:58):
shepherd through that analysisand then interpretation phase.
And yeah, so we'll spend it, spend100 days in Antarctica collecting samples.
But then we'll also spend 100 daysin a basement lab,
you know, getting our samplesjust in the right state to
then be be fully analyzedin a, in a mass spectrometer
or laser spectroscope or whateverthese pieces of equipment we have.
(09:19):
So and then of course, as well. Right.
Once you then you turn this beautifulice core sample, you know, we destroy it
in the analysis process and it becomesjust ones and zeros, just digital data.
Then PhD students and postdocsget to have all the fun with it.
And then actually interpreting,okay, what do these signals mean.
And then once you establishthat proxy relationship you can
then push it back in time.And that's where yeah, we get to do
(09:40):
the sort of cooltime travel with ice cores.
If there's a place in Antarcticathat's really critical,
that's changing fast,like like Thwaites Glacier,
and we have no climate recordsin that region.
But thankfully with the,you know, ice there
and the particular siteswe have on the coast,
you know, we were able to say, hey,we have an opportunity there.
You know, these
these sites have been recording thatclimate information for time immemorial.
(10:01):
And we just have to go thereand collect our core sample.
Thinking about that field work.
Like, I'd love to
have you go through what it takesto get to a location like that.
So yeah, it takes I know a lot of people.
It's a huge collaboration.
And, you know, we're very lucky, you know?
So most of my work centers in Antarcticaand I've most often gone on projects
that are at least co-funded by the USNational Science Foundation.
(10:24):
And we as Americans are incredibly luckyto have this, this human
and physical infrastructure in Antarcticathat gives us, you know, the greatest
logistical capability down thereof any national Antarctic program.
You know, McMurdo station is abouta thousand people in the summertime.
You know,the next biggest station is South
Pole Station,which is 150 people in the summertime.
(10:44):
Any other research stationis much smaller than that.
So we sort of start with that bigger,a broader base of support,
and that allows us to get flown outto the middle of nowhere.
All these placeswe need to go to learn about,
you know, how the Earth system operates.
And, you know, back over the last100,000, 10,000
and even hundredsof thousands of years ago.
So, you know, it's just it'slike a huge chain of, of experts,
(11:09):
you know, the logistics experts,if we can get us moving
even from the US to New Zealand,where we then catch US Air Force flights
from New Zealand to McMurdo station,and then you're working with Canadian
bush pilots to fly out from McMurdoto the Allen Hills, or to to waste of air.
These places where we're collectingice cores, all of those things
come with a huge, pyramid of support beneath them.
(11:30):
So everybody in the programis super essential to getting it all done.
And it's the same, you know, inthe icebreaker context, whether you're on
a US research vesselthat than the saying it'd be Palmer or,
I had the pleasure of being invitedon the South Korean icebreaker Iran.
And then in that case as well,
you know, we have two helicopterson that research vessel
which allow us as as Glacier peopleto get off the ship and onto the ice.
(11:54):
And then even thoughwe were very restricted on time,
you know, we did all of our workfor this project in 13 days.
We had off the ship to absolutely race.
And you know,how deep can we drill in 13 days?
And we set ourselvesa target of 150m deep and hit the magic
hundred and 50 meter number,and everything went off without a hitch.
But certainly,
you know, in any of these projects,there's a heck of a lot more things
(12:17):
that can go wrong than can go right.
So it's just a huge balancing effortof that capability to get way out there
and get the samples and the understandingthat we need, but also mitigating risk
at every single step.
I'd be hard pressed to find a bigger fan
of the US Antarctic programin any national Antarctic program than me.
I think it's just amazing what we're able
to do down therein such a challenging environment.
(12:37):
I think I've been to Antarcticamaybe seven times now.
It's such an intense human experience.
That sort of builds, you know,as you're moving towards your goal.
And so you reallythere's a lot of conversations
you can have as well around that.
As things get more and more real,
you tend to get more and more connectedas a team as well.
And yeah, you come out of it having hadthis huge, overwhelming experience
(12:57):
and, you know, hopefully all of that,what you needed to do came off well.
You know, once you've been puttingyour head down for five, six, seven weeks
and to get that drilling targetor drill to bedrock, the sense
of of accomplishment and reliefwhen when you do set a goal,
you know, I was on a drilling project,my PhD, with the New Zealand
Antarctic Program, where we were drilling760m to bedrock and, you know,
(13:21):
you're just charging to to get it doneand be as efficient as possible.
And then once you finally,you know, hit the bedrock, you get to see
the bottom ofof that part of the Antarctic ice sheet.
And then you get that release like, oh,we did it.
You know, never mind the factthat, you know, you've done it,
but then you have another month of work toto get everything packed up,
get back to station, get stuff back to, to the real world.
(13:44):
So it's just an intense place, andit's such a departure from normal life.
Yeah, certainly.
You know, then then getting these samplesback as well.
You know, we haven't been able to workwith the cores
that we collectedon the pre and vessel yet.
It's been almost a year.
But you know, getting
getting funding and equipmentin place to do the analysis is difficult.
But you know for me
knowing the informationis likely contained in those cores
(14:05):
and then being able to extractthat is is super exciting.
And particularly that one,
because it was my first NSFproject as lead Pi in Antarctic.
And it was,
you know, it's really the dream projectthat that I've been pursuing
for my whole career.
So it's really gratifyingto work with folks and have support
from the NSF to go dothose really wild new ideas.
(14:27):
So one of the other thingsthat you've had some success with is,
social mediacommunicating your experiences there.
Can you talk a little bitabout what that has meant,
what difference that has made,what the reactions have been?
Yeah, I've been really lucky to enjoysome pretty wide exposure through TikTok,
particularlybecause of that very visual platform
(14:48):
and how engaging Antarctica ison, on camera.
It's a very lucky combinationto to draw people in with the excitement
of going to Antarctica and snakesand science, and at the same time,
it's been a really helpful wayfor me to sort of process
some of those aspectsof doing Antarctic field work
that you just can't share with peopleor people don't get to see.
(15:08):
So it's sort ofI mean, it's like a portal for the public.
Yeah.
So social media has been a great wayto show people what we do down there.
I think people are pretty surprised
at the amount of thingswe're doing in Antarctica.
And you see these big pieces of equipmentlike big National Coast Guard icebreaker
that comes in to resupply McMurdoevery season like that ship exists
to support the US Antarctic program.
(15:29):
That's it's one job, and it's really coolto see these things in action.
I'm able to give peoplea really direct view,
and I become pretty good, I guessnow, over the years of working with
camera equipmentthat you need to capture this stuff, well,
like we're very luckynow that the only camera equipment
I need is an iPhone that I can keep nearmy body to keep it warm in Antarctica,
and then documenta little pieces of what we're doing,
(15:51):
you know, as, as we're doing it.
And, you know, even as I'm leading it,
I started to be able to figure outhow to get just the right snippets to
then be able to to show people visuallyhow we get fieldwork done, particularly.
So, I mean, I have a very fieldworkheavy portfolio right now.
And and so that's what people get to see.And on social media.
And it is a more of a challengeto feature,
you know,all of the really incredible detail,
(16:13):
precise lab work that we then need to doto to translate that core sample
into scientific informationand knowledge for us all to benefit from.
But trying to keep up the creativityas we move through that process and,
you know, show them what we do.
Like when our cores come back to
the States while they go to the NSFIce Core facility in Denver, Colorado.
And that's a really fascinating placeto to go with the camera,
(16:35):
to see these core samples
that are in hundreds of thousandsor even millions of years old
and be able to, you know, look at themand talk to the curators about them.
So that's sort of the next stepfor for some of these projects.
It's a real unique opportunityto look at the past.
The last question I have for
you today is thinking about the futureand your work in the years ahead.
What are you most excited
(16:56):
about finding out from those coresyou haven't got to look at yet?
Yeah, I mean, we really want to understandhow the climate
in these critical regions of WestAntarctica, a place called the Amundsen
Sea, is sort of home to the most fastchanging glaciers in Antarctica.
And we have really no observationalclimate information in that region.
(17:17):
There are no researchstations. It's a really stormy coastline.
And so ice coresare the only way for us to get context
of the last hundred years or 150 years.
And it's just a really fun, basic exerciseof filling in blank spaces
on the map as well.
We have a lot of icecores from inland West Antarctica
that were collected by NSF projectsin the late 1990s, early 2000.
(17:38):
So we have nothing from right out
on the coast, rightwhere all of the change is happening.
The change in glaciers in Antarcticais largely being forced by the ocean,
and the atmosphere also has a role.
So since we call it ice, oceanatmosphere interactions, super complex,
three systems interacting, all of whichare highly variable in time and in space.
And so we need observations.
(17:59):
And these ice cores
are one tool in the toolkit that we haveof observing the glacier systems.
Now with geophysical toolsand getting out there on the ice.
But we don't really have a wayto gain information about Thwaites
Glacier back in time through anythingbut ice cores.
Certainly at thatthe resolution that we have.
So year by year information,you know, we have a general feeling
(18:20):
that some of the retreat of these glacierswas initiated
in the 1940sdue to the strong El Nino event.
I think with these covers,we can take them back to 1940
and say, well, this is how anomaloustemperature was in 1940.
This is how anomalousthe winds were in 1941, in 1942,
and really firm up that hypothesisof that initiation of this big,
(18:43):
globally relevant retreatof these glaciers that we're we're worried
is is irreversible and could happenfaster than is ideal for a society.
We know the glaciers are going to continueto change.
We don't know how much sea level risethey're going to be sending our way,
and we don't know how fast.
So we're really trying to gainbetter clarity on that.
And ice coresare going to be a great addition
in all the different waysof being able to do that.
(19:04):
Special thanks to Peter Neff.
For The Discovery Files, I'm Nate Pottker.
You can watch video versions
of these conversations on our YouTubechannel by searching @NSFscience.
Please subscribe wherever you get podcastsand if you like our program,
share it with a friendand consider leaving a review.
Discover how the U.S.
National Science Foundationis advancing research at NSF.gov.
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