A Manitoba researcher is part of a team helping to recover an ice core in northern Canada to learn more about Arctic sea ice and climate conditions.
The core, which will be drilled from the Müller Ice Cap in Nunavut’s Axel Heiberg Island, will be about 600 metres long and 10 centimetres thick. It will be the deepest ice core ever drilled in Canada.
Once retrieved, it will be sent back to laboratories in Canada and Europe, where it will be examined to hopefully answer questions like how sea ice conditions changed over the past millennia, how sensitive Arctic ice caps are to changes in climate conditions, and what climate conditions the ice caps experienced throughout the past thousands of years.
“Our hope is that the ice at the bottom will be over 10,000 years old, maybe up to even 20,000 years old,” explained David Babb, a research associate at the University of Manitoba.
“That will provide a continuous record of the climate and specifically the sea ice across the Arctic Ocean, based on its location relative to the Arctic Ocean.”
The process of retrieving the ice core involves drilling the core from the ice cap using a deep trench and a drill shaft. Once the core comes up, it goes to a logging table where it is processed and cut into one-metre sections. Researchers then run some samples and check the electrical conductivity of the ice before it’s bagged and put into coolers.
Babb added that since researchers tend to be limited to the last 200 years when it comes to understanding climate change, this ice core can help provide a longer-term record and highlight the dramatic warming that is taking place.
“Really, to gain a sense of the context of that warming, it’s really important to have these long-term records and get that long, historical perspective on the climate,” he said.
The drilling is expected to run until June, as that’s when the top of the ice cap begins to melt.
