By ELISE CUTTS , Science.  Excerpt: Samples of eerie blue glacial ice from Antarctica are a staggering 6 million years old, scientists announced last week,  doubling the previous record  for Earth’s oldest ice. The ice opens a new window on Earth’s ancient climate—one that isn’t exactly what scientists expected. The ice opens a new window on Earth’s ancient climate—one that isn’t exactly what scientists expected. The results are preliminary, stresses Ed Brook, a geochemist at Oregon State University (OSU) and leader of the U.S. Center for Oldest Ice Exploration (COLDEX), which  presented   the   discovery  last week here in multiple talks at the European Geosciences Union General Assembly. But if even a tiny drop in CO 2  can kick off a major climate change, Brook adds, “you know, we probably care about that.”....  Full article at https://www.science.org/content/article/oldest-ever-ice-offers-glimpse-earth-ice-ages . 

By CHRISTIAN ELLIOTT , Science.  Excerpt: The helicopter hovered overhead, whipping up snow. ...One trip down, 17 more to go,  thought [Peter] Neff, a polar glaciologist  at the University of Minnesota (UM) Twin Cities. ...Neff and his team would have just 10 days to drill ice cores on Canisteo, a peninsula on the west coast of Antarctica—and a blizzard was already looming. ...Scientists usually target sites deep in the continent’s interior, where the weather is calmer and they can spend years collecting kilometers-long ice cores that record hundreds of thousands of years of climate history. Neff needed just a couple hundred years of history, and he only needed to drill 150 meters deep to get it. But his chosen location was exceptionally remote and stormy. He was there because of ...the  Pine Island  and  Thwaites glaciers , which jut into the Amundsen Sea as frozen shelves tens of kilometers wide. These glaciers act as corks in the bottle of the West Antar...

https://eos.org/articles/ice-cores-record-long-ago-seasons-in-antarctica By Caroline Hasler , Eos/AGU.  Excerpt: Researchers used ice core data to reconstruct seasonal temperatures throughout the Holocene. The results link especially hot summers with patterns in Earth’s orbit. ...In January, a team of scientists presented a seasonal temperature record dating back 11,000 years. The ice revealed a connection between intense solar radiation and hot summers in Antarctica. ...“[This] is the first record of its kind,” said  Tyler Jones , a polar climatologist at the University of Colorado Boulder’s Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research (INSTAAR) and lead author of the  study . Seasonal temperature data help researchers understand Antarctica’s natural rhythm, which is critical for anticipating the polar regions’ responses to warming. ...The data showed that summer temperatures in West Antarctica were higher when the region received a more intense dose of sunlight. This decept...

https://eos.org/articles/cold-curriculum-for-a-hot-topic Source:  By Nancy Averett, Eos/AGU.  Excerpt: educators at the Byrd Polar and Climate Research Center do more than just talk about ice cores and what they reveal about temperature, precipitation, and climate: The scientists also help students create their own ice cores—using Pringles potato chip cans filled with layers of frozen water, instant coffee, and other materials to represent the different layers found in the ice. “If you haven’t seen an ice core and looked at what patterns are there, it’s really hard to just jump to the data and have a deeper meaning of what [they’re] telling you or how [they connect] to the core,” said  Jason Cervenec , education and outreach director at the Center, which is on the campus of Ohio State University (OSU) in Columbus. Every year, Cervenec and his staff host thousands of kindergarten to 12th-grade students to teach them about ice cores and the secrets they hold. A handful of...

https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/08/surprising-pulses-ancient-warming-found-antarctic-ice-samples Source:    By Sid Perkins, Science  Magazine. Excerpt: Earth’s ice ages are typically thought of as seemingly unending periods of bitter cold. But a new study suggests bursts of carbon dioxide (CO 2 ) often entered the atmosphere during these times, providing decades or even centuries of relative warmth amid 10,000-year stretches of chill. Such pulses may have caused glaciers and ice sheets to retreat somewhat, thus opening up new areas for plants and animals. ... Nehrbass-Ahles’s team then analyzed portions of a 3.5-kilometer-long ice core drilled at one of the highest points in eastern Antarctica. Their samples capture times between 330,000 and 450,000 years ago—an interval that includes one complete ice age as well as the warm spells on either side. On average, each data point was separated from its neighbors by about 300 years, a four- to sixfold improvement in time...

https://eos.org/articles/antarctic-ice-cores-offer-a-whiff-of-earths-ancient-atmosphere Source:   By Katherine Kornei. Eos/AGU. Excerpt: To determine how Earth’s climate has varied over time, scientists are constantly on the lookout for the oldest whiffs of our planet’s atmosphere. The current record holders, recently extracted from Antarctic ice cores and dated to over 2 million years old, reveal concentrations of gases like carbon dioxide (CO 2 ) and methane in ancient Earth’s atmosphere. Researchers have now shown that levels of these greenhouse gases fluctuated less millions of years ago than they did in more recent times. That discovery has implications for how Earth transitioned between two climatic periods roughly a million years ago, the team reported. ...The climatic history of Earth has been far from constant: For the past 800,000 years, continental-scale ice sheets have repeatedly grown and retreated in glacial-interglacial cycles occurring roughly every 100,000 year...