A team of scientists from Europe is heading to East Antarctica this week to drill into the ice core in order to find our planet's oldest ice. The project, called Beyond EPICA-Oldest Ice (BE-OI), will give insight on the climate situation of our planet since prehistoric times.

The ice the researchers will examine is approximately 1.5 million years old, and it will be found at 1.8 miles beneath the surface. As part of the research, the air inside the ice will be examined. This procedure will allow the scientists to get a picture of the manner in which the air composition changed since the dawn of time.

Oldest Ice: Answer To Earth's Climate Behavior

There have been previous projects similar to this one. In the beginning of the 2000s, a similar ice core was drilled from Antarctica, allowing scientists to analyze the climate conditions that our planet recorded roughly 800,000 years in the past.

While the current project is mainly a continuation of the previous attempts, the novelty it brings is the depth of the ice core that will be subjected to scientific study, which is roughly double the initial one. This way, the period that will be examined by the BE-OI project goes back to the cold glacial times the planet went through approximately 40,000 to 100,000 years ago.

Investigation Of The World's Climate Cycle

The investigation will examine the climate cycle of Earth, providing the scientific world with massively important information on the climate dynamics from during the climate period shifts. The project will also allow creating a pattern of our climate cycle's activity, which will then create a clearer picture of the way global warming has affected the natural variation of the climate cycle.

Another significance of the current research is that it will give insight on the way the ice will behave as global warming contributes to the melting of ice sheets. The Eastern region of Antarctica is one of the most conclusive places where such a research could be conducted because of the long-term activity of the ice sheets in the area.

The main benefit of having the possibility to examine such a long-lasting record of our planet's climate is that the current hypotheses of the scientists will be either confirmed or declined. The data that was examined up until now is insufficient for a comprehensive series of conclusions to be drawn when it comes to the climate behavior of our planet.

"During previous studies we determined key regions where we expect the oldest continuous ice record on Earth. Now we have to prove this and it is important that we learn as much as possible about deposition processes and the composition of the ice," explained BE-OI project coordinator Olaf Eisen, a glaciologist from the Alfred Wegener Institute in Germany.