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Glacial Secrets

October 8, 2018

MIT-WHOI Joint program student Matt Osman holds a 2,000-year-old ice core sample that he, scientist Sarah Das, and colleagues drilled from an ice cap in Greenland during a research expedition in April, 2015. The scientists slice up the core samples using ice saws in sub-zero-temperature freezers, and analyze them to reconstruct climate profiles and atmospheric conditions from ancient times up to the present. Using ice as an archive to understand climate changes in the past can help scientists predict what may happen in the future in the face of global warming in the Arctic. (Photo courtesy of Nathan Mollica, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution)