EPICA - European Project for Ice Coring in Antarctica
ESF Research Networking Programme
Traverse convoy on its way to the EPICA drilling site - Dome Concordia. Photo: A. Pierre/IFRTP.
Although there is only a little doubt about the close relationship between atmospheric greenhouse gas levels and global temperature, a great uncertainty still persists over the likely extent and speed of the changes, and how they will be distributed regionally. To assess recent human driven climate change and predict its future progress, researchers have to ascertain how global climate throughout the Earth’s past responded to the natural variations of atmospheric greenhouse gases concentration and investigate the underlying mechanisms of their interrelations.
While there are several ways how to re-construct climatic history of the Earth, the polar ice caps archive the most reliable records of past climate and are the only storages where climatologists can obtain data both on past climate changes and on past atmosphere’s composition. The analysis of ice cores drilled out from Antarctica ice sheet thus allow to relate information about the climate changes to the composition of atmosphere.
The ESF’s EPICA project, the first truly pan-European project for ice coring involving 12 partners from 10 European countries, started in 1998 with two main objectives. Firstly to obtain a full documentation of the Antarctic climate record going as far into the past as possible and then to compare this with the Greenland records to put the Antarctic climate into global settings. To accomplish these goals, the researchers selected two drilling sites. The first location in eastern Antarctica was determined in order to get the longest possible and the least disturbed climate record, the second one in Dronning Maud Land provided more detailed data on the last glacial cycle (cca. 160 000 years).
EPICA Dome C: drilling. Photo courtesy of Laurent Augustin, LGGE, Grenoble.
As a method to identify past changes from ice cores, the scientists used measuring the proportion of two kinds of oxygen isotopes in a piece of ice taken from different places of the core sample. The greater presence of the heavier 18O isotope means that the ice sample consolidated in warmer period whereas its near absence shows the opposite.
The composition of atmosphere and the greenhouse gases atmospheric concentrations are determined from air trapped in bubbles in the ice as porous snow freezes into ice; a process continuously preserving samples of past atmosphere.
The scientific achievements of the EPICA proved the extreme difficult logistics and coordination of the project worthy. By drilling nearly 3.300 metres deep into the ice sheet, the researchers obtained one of the longest climate records going 800 000 years back. The following analysis of the core showed that there was no time in the last 800 000 years history when the carbon dioxide or methane concentrations were nearly as high as in this century.
“EPICA has contributed to understanding what the climate system is capable of – such as changing rapidly – which helps us to improve the models predicting the future. We also see the carbon dioxide concentration changing with the climate, telling us about how the oceans are capable of taking up carbon”, said Dr. Eric Wolff, Chief Scientist of one of the EPICA drilling sites.
“That is highly relevant, as we want to know what happens to the carbon we emitted into the atmosphere in the last 200 years - how much of it is still going to be there in a hundred years’ time, and how much of it is taken up by vegetation, how much of it is taken up by the oceans. By knowing what has happened in the past, you can work that out” concluded Wolff.
Although the EPICA finished in 2006, the members of the team want to continue in the ice core research and formed a group called EUROPICS (European Partnerships in Ice Core Sciences), which the ESF’s European Polar Board is supporting. There are also plans for future large project similar to EPICA that could be again coordinated by European Science Foundation.
In 2008 EPICA project was awarded a prestigious Descartes Prize for collaborative, transnational research, a great success not only for EPICA research group but also for ESF as a project coordinator. It once again stressed the basic fact that for top quality science and outstanding achievements multinational cooperation is substantial.
Back to:
ESF provides the scientific, administrative and technical secretariat for COST (European Cooperation in Science and Technology).