NZ - led team has ice core success in the Antarctic...

Foremost Delta II driving from McMurdo Station (US) to Scott Base (NZ) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

English: Scott Base sign. Carefully positioned along the road from the American, McMurdo Base, New Zealanders proclaiming dominion over the Ross Dependency (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

English: New Zealand's Scott Base as photographed from the sea ice off the shore of Ross Island in Antarctica (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

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An NZ-led team of scientists have successfully drilled through 763m of ice on an Antarctic island in a project looking at 30,000 years of climate change. A New Zealand-led team of scientists has successfully drilled through more than 760m of Antarctic ice to bedrock, in a bid to unearth a detailed record of 30,000 years of climate change. The 763m-long ice core is the result of many years' planning and four summers of field work on Roosevelt Island in the eastern Ross Sea. It is being described as one of the most important climate archives from Antarctica to date. The core will soon be flown to the United States' McMurdo Station before being shipped back to New Zealand in March, when a 50-strong science team from New Zealand, Australia, Denmark, Germany, Italy, China, Sweden, the US and UK will start to take more than 100,000 samples from it at a purpose-built facility in Lower Hutt. "I am thrilled with the team's success," said team leader, Victoria University's Nancy Bertler, who was on Roosevelt Island on Thursday night when the drill bit, after piercing through the ice, brought up 40cm of Roosevelt Island sediment. "The drill cores will provide the most detailed record of the climate history of the Ross Sea region for the last 30,000 years - the time during which the coastal margin of the Antarctic ice sheet retreated following the last great ice age." The sediment may reveal what the region was like the last time Earth's climate was as warm as it is today. Roosevelt Island is nearly 1000km from New Zealand's Scott Base, in the western Ross Sea, and supporting such a major field operation had been challenging and complex, said Antarctica New Zealand chief executive Lou Sanson. "This is a marquee project for Antarctica New Zealand, and we are very proud of the success of Nancy Bertler and her team," he said. Acknowledgements:  NZN http://www.antarcticanz.govt.nz/scott-base http://www.antarcticanz.govt.nz/image-galleries/scott-base/category/9 Ecospree