41 FEBRUARY 2023 WorldWide Drilling Resource® Drilling for Answers in Antarctica Adapted from Information by Beyond EPICA - Oldest Ice As summer in the southern hemisphere began, researchers started to work at the remote Little Dome C site in Antarctica. The site reopened for its second ice core drilling campaign of the international research project coordinated by the Institute of Polar Sciences of the CNR (National Research Council of Italy). Little Dome C is an area of about four square miles, located roughly 20 miles from the Italian-French Concordia Station and over 620 miles from the coast - one of the most extreme places on the planet, with strong winds and temperatures dropping to -61ºF (-52ºC). The international team of 15 people are working on a deep drilling campaign for the European project Beyond EPICA - Oldest Ice. They will work on the Antarctic plateau roughly 10,500 feet above sea level, where the average summer temperature is -31ºF (-35°C), to obtain high-resolution ice core information on climate and environmental changes over the last 1.5 million years in Antarctica. The EPICA (European Project for Ice Coring in Antarctica) project is funded by the European Commission and coordinated by Carlo Barbante, director of the Institute of Polar Sciences of the National Research Council of Italy, and professor at Ca’ Foscari University of Venice. The project involves twelve European and non-European international research institutes as well as IPEV and the PNRA, the French and Italian polar agencies. “During our previous EPICA project, which ended in 2008, we managed to extract and analyze an 800,000-year-old ice core. Now we are trying to travel back further in time . . . which is what we are trying to do in Antarctica with Beyond EPICA,” said Barbante. Over the next few years, analysis of ice cores extracted from a depth of around 8850 feet will enable the reconstruction of the world’s climate history, going back in time by 1.5 million years to discover information on temperature and on the concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. “In the previous campaign, despite the prohibitive weather conditions, with gusts of wind and temperature almost always below -40°F (-40ºC), we set up a campsite that can host up to 15 people for a few months, as well as a complex drilling system,” stated Barbante. “Our starting point will be [425 feet] deep, which is the depth we reached last year.” The climate and the environmental history of our planet is archived in the ice, which can reveal information from hundreds of millennia ago on the evolution of temperature and the composition of the atmosphere. Researchers will be able to assess the content of greenhouse gases, such as methane and carbon dioxide, in the atmosphere of the past and linking the findings to how temperatures have evolved. “We believe this ice core will give us information on the climate of the past and on the greenhouse gasses that were in the atmosphere during the Mid-Pleistocene Transition, which happened between 900,000 and 1.2 mi l l ion years ago,” explained Barbante. During this transition, the regular 40,000-year cycle changed to the current 100,000-year cycle; the reason this happened is a mystery this project hopes to solve. ENV Aerial view of the Little Dome C camp. Barbante©PNRA/IPEV Phone: 845-278-1892 E-mail: NEWWEXPO@gmail.com newwassociation.org Contact: ____________________________________________________________ Address: ____________________________________________________________ State/Zip Code: ______________________________________________________ Phone & Fax : _______________________________________________________ E-mail: ______________________________________________________________ Preregistration - $25 per person On-site Registration - $30 Spouse & Children under 16 years - FREE Registrant(s) Names: ________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________ Credit Card Type ________________________ Expiration Date _ _ / _ _ Credit Card # ____________________________________________________________ Complete this form and fax to: (845) 278-1899 or mail to: NEWWA c/o Markets Beyond Group 7 Bailey Lane, Brewster NY 10509 Preregistration NEWWA New England Water Well Assoc. Expo March 10-11, 2023 Best Western - Marlborough, Massachusetts Preregistration Deadline: March 1, 2023 April Issue Deadlines: Space Reservation - February 25th Ad Copy - March 1
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