Ive just returned from the privilege of spending some time with the scientists at the Centre for Ice and Climate at the Niels Bohr Institute, Copenhagen.
Walking the Ice Library is a brief video document made at the NBI’s library of ice cores: 60 years of samples, collecting ice as far back as the last ice-age and drilling hundreds of metres into the Greenland icesheet.
This ice library is a global resource, and the NBI regularly hosts visiting scientists, who come to compare data, discuss results and progress an understanding of global climates across time.
I had a series of conversations with Dr Paul Vallelonga about his research around mapping atmospheric impurities in icecore samples, and how to chase molecules through frozen water to hypothesise on historic atmospheres, and flows of wind long gone.
Molecule Hunters is a brief summary of the time spent in the gas measurements lab, where glacier samples are melted, then thin glass tubes analyse the meltwater for carbon dioxide, oxygen isotopes as a measure of passing years and temperature variations, hydrogen peroxide as a measure of springs past.
Ice is the paper on which the passing of time is recorded.
With thanks to Dr Paul Vallelonga, Dr Thomas Blunier and the team at the NBI.
Supported by the Fauvette Loureiro Memorial Artists Travel Scholarship, University of Sydney, SCA, without which this research would not have been possible.