In this video, Professor David Vaughan speaks from the Thwaites Glacier as he explains how ice cores are used to verify satellite data to help scientists better understand climate change.

Ice cores are cylindrical samples of ice from deep dug holes drilled into the glaciers. They can measure up to a mile in length.

As ice sheets form over thousands of years, layers of accumulated snow fall on top of each other and compact the snow beneath them. The ice sheets can be several kilometres thick. The youngest snow lies on the top, whereas older ice is preserved further down.

Analysing ice cores helps us to understand to what Earth's climate was like in the past because they act like in-depth data archives. Layers in the ice core correspond to seasons and glacial cycles because bubbles in the ice preserve samples of air from atmospheres long gone.

The oldest ice cores come from Greenland (130,000 years) and Antarctica (800,000 years). Scientists can also extract ice cores from ice caps and mountain glaciers.

Ice cores extracted from the poles provide a reliable data record because the low temperature in the polar regions prevents ice melt from melting, which would corrupt the data record. Scientists can compare and differentiate climate variability from multiple ice cores across the globe. This information allows scientists to build a picture of past climate change and help them build models to predict future conditions.

In conjunction with ice core datasets, satellites are used to gather information about snow and ice properties over a huge continental scale offering high resolution of information and images. Combining data collected by satellites with in situ measurements allows scientists to build accurate pictures of our climate history and to build future climate models.

For a detailed understanding of how scientists monitor atmospheric composition using earth observation and to understand the critically important impact that is has on our climate, you can take the ‘Monitoring Atmospheric Composition from Space' MOOC by Imperative Space.

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Featured Educator:

• Professor David Vaughan