Outside the inner freezer is a second room, held at a comparatively balmy -24 C. There, researchers can run tests on the cores, which are stored in meter-long tubes in rows of racks, or prepare them to be shipped to scientists across the country or abroad.
Global samples
The site holds cores from Antarctica, Greenland and northern Canada. A smaller facility at Ohio State University holds some cores from alpine glaciers. Drilling an ice core, a process that can plunge miles deep, can take years, though the crews would only be on site for a fraction of that time.
“The deepest core that we have is the Vostok ice core, which is 3,600 meters deep,” Nunn said. “That one was drilled back in the mid-90s as a joint effort between the United States, France and Russia.” Vostok was drilled in Antarctica. “That’s the oldest continuous core in our collection. It dates back about 420,000 years.”
Paul Cutler, program director in Antarctic science at the National Science Foundation, said in an interview that a larger freezer for the lab is scheduled to start operating in 2025, part of an effort to contain the ever-growing collection.
“It supports projects across the globe,” Cutler said of the lab. While the majority of researchers who request ice cores are focused on some aspects of climate science, the cores provide snapshots of what was happening eons ago by trapping bubbles and particles from the atmosphere.
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