Inside an Antarctic time machine Lee Hotz

come with me to the bottom of the world

Antarctica the highest driest windiest

and yes coldest region on earth more

arid than the Sahara and in parts colder

than Mars the ice of Antarctica glows

with a light so dazzling it blinds the

unprotected eye early explorers rub

cocaine in their eyes to kill the pain

of it the weight of the ice is such that

the entire continent sags below sea

level beneath its weight yet the ice of

Antarctica is a calendar of climate

change it records the annual rise and

fall of greenhouse gases and

temperatures going back before the onset

of the last ice ages nowhere on earth

offers us such a perfect record and here

scientists are drilling into the past of

our planet to find clues to the future

of climate change this past January I

traveled to a place called waste divide

about 600 miles from the South Pole it

is the best place on the planet many say

to study the history of climate change

there about 45 scientists from the

University of Wisconsin the desert

Research Institute in Nevada and others

have been working to answer a central

question about global warming what is

the exact relationship between levels of

greenhouse gases and planetary

temperatures it’s urgent work

we know that temperatures are rising

this past May was the warmest worldwide

on record and we know that levels of

greenhouse gases are rising too what we

don’t know is the exact precise

immediate impact of these changes on

natural climate patterns winds ocean

currents precipitation rates cloud

formation things that bear on the health

and well-being of billions of people

their entire camp every item of gear was

ferried 885 miles from McMurdo Station

the main US supply base on the coast of

Antarctica waste divide itself though is

a circle of tents and the snow in

Blizzard winds the crew sling ropes

between the tents

that people can feel their way safely to

the nearest ice house and to the nearest

outhouse it snows so heavily there the

installation was almost immediately

buried indeed the researchers picked

this site because ice and snow

accumulates here ten times faster than

anywhere else in Antarctica they have to

dig themselves out every day it makes

for an exotic and chilly commute but

under the surface is a hive of

industrial activity centered around an

eight million dollar drill assembly

periodically this drill like a biopsy

needle plunges thousands of feet deep

into the ice to extract a marrow of

gases and isotopes for analysis ten

times a day they extract a ten-foot long

cylinder of compressed ice crystals that

contain the unsullied air and trace

chemicals laid down by snow season after

season for thousands of years it’s

really a time machine at the peak of

activity earlier this year the

researchers lowered the drill an extra

hundred feet deeper into the ice every

day and another three hundred and sixty

five years deeper into the past

periodically they remove cylinder of ice

like gamekeepers popping a spent shotgun

shell from the barrel of a drill they

inspect it they check it for cracks for

drill damage for Spall’s for chips more

importantly they prepare it for

inspection and analysis by 27

independent laboratories in the United

States and Europe who will examine it

for 40 different trace chemicals related

to climate some in parts per quadrillion

yes I said that with a Q quadrillion

they cut the cylinders up into three

foot sections for easier handling and

shipment back to these labs some 8,000

miles from the drill site each cylinder

is a parfait of time this ice formed as

snow fifteen thousand eight hundred

years ago when our ancestors were

dobbing themselves with pink and

considering the radical new technology

of the alphabet bathed in polarized

light and cut in cross-section this

ancient ice reveals itself as a mosaic

of colors each one showing how

conditions that depth in the ice have

affected this material at depths where

pressures can reach a ton per square

inch every year it begins with a

snowflake and by digging into fresh snow

we can see how this process is ongoing

today this wall of undisturbed snow

backlit by sunlight shows the striations

of winter and summer snow layer upon

layer each storm scours the atmosphere

washing out dust soot trace chemicals

and depositing them on the snowpack year

after year millennia after millennia

creating a kind of periodic table of

elements that at this point is more than

11,000 feet thick from this we can

detect an extraordinary number of things

we can see the calcium from world’s

deserts soot from distant wildfires

methane is an indicator the strength of

Pacific monsoon all wafted on winds from

warmer latitudes to this remote from

very cold place

most importantly these cylinders in the

snow trap air each cylinder is about 10%

ancient era a pristine time capsule of

greenhouse gases carbon dioxide methane

nitrous oxide all unchanged from the day

that snow formed and first fell this is

the object of their scrutiny but don’t

we already know what we need to know

about greenhouse gases why do we need to

study this anymore don’t we already know

how they affect temperatures don’t we

already know the consequences of a

changing climate on our settled

civilization the truth is we only know

the outlines and what we don’t

completely understand we can’t properly

fix indeed we run the risk of making

things worse consider the single most

successful international environmental

effort of the 20th century the Montreal

Protocol in which the nations of Earth

banded together to protect the planet

from the harmful effects of ozone

destroying chemicals used at that time

in air conditioners refrigerators and

other cooling devices we banned those

chemicals and we replace them

unknowingly with other substances that

molecule per molecule are a hundred

times more potent as heat trapping

greenhouse gases than carbon dioxide

this process requires extraordinary

precautions the scientists must ensure

that the ice is not contaminated

moreover in this 8 thousand mile journey

they have to ensure this ice doesn’t

melt

imagine juggling a snowball across the

tropics they have to in fact make sure

this ice never gets warmer than about 20

degrees below zero otherwise the key

gases inside it will dissipate so in the

coldest place on earth they work inside

a refrigerator as they handle the ice in

fact they keep an extra pair of gloves

warming in an oven so that when their

work gloves freeze and their fingers

stiffened they can Don a fresh pair they

work against the clock and against the

thermometer so far they’ve packed up

about 4,500 feet of ice cores for

shipment back to the United States this

past season they manhandled them across

the ice to waiting aircraft the 109th

Air National Guard flew the most recent

shipment of ice back to the coast of

Antarctica where it was boarded onto a

freighter shipped across the tropics to

California unloaded put on a truck

driven across the desert to the National

ice core laboratory in Denver Colorado

where as we speak scientists are now

slicing this material up for samples for

analysis to be distributed to the

laboratories around the country and in

Europe

Antarctica was this planets last empty

quarter the blind spot in our expanding

vision of the world early explorers

sailed off the edge of the map and they

found a place where the normal rules of

time and temperature seemed suspended

here the ice seems a living presence the

wind that rubs against it gives it voice

it is a voice of experience

it is a voice we should heed thank you