Scientists Seeking A Glacier's History Drill For Answers In Its Ice
HEIDELBERG, GERMANY - MAY 23: Werner Aeschbach, a professor in the Hydrospheric Tracers and Proxies group at the Institute of Environmental Physics (IUP) at the University of Heidelberg, holds up an air bubble-filled slice of an ice core sample extracted from a mountain in Austria on May 23, 2024 in Heidelberg, Germany. The ice core sample, which a team from the Institute for Interdisciplinary Mountain Research of the Austrian Academy of Sciences extracted recently from the Weissseespitze, a 3,500 meter high summit in the Oetztal mountain range in Austrian Tyrol, is likely between 400 and 500 years old. Argon gas analysis, which measures argon isotopes trapped in air bubbles in the ice, will help in specifying the ice's age. The Weissseespitze has ice ranging from 400 to 6,000 years old, which gives scientists a rare opportunity to analyse the history of the adjacent Gepatschferner glacier, Austria’s second biggest glacier. Variations in the layers of ice at the Weissseespitze can reveal periods of glacier expansion and retreat, giving insight into periods of previous warming and cooling in Europe’s alpine region. While Austria's glaciers have been steadily receding since the Little Ice Age that ended in the mid-19th century, periods of intermittent glacier growth extended into the 1980s. Since then the glaciers have been receding rapidly, with the pace of melting accelerating sharply in the last decade. Scientists blame global warming, which is extending and intensifying the summer melting season of the glaciers. Diminished annual snowfalls are leaving the glaciers more exposed to the sun and preventing the formation of new ice. (Footage by Sean Gallup/Getty Images)