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Glaciology and Global Warming

What is the connection?

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Climate Change: Today vs Tomorrow

• Average temperature today = 15° C– Without the greenhouse effect: -18°C– Over the past century: A rise of 0.7° C

• Predictions (The most catastrophic!)– A rise of up to 6° C – Over the next 100 years

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The Procedure

• Measurements?• Traces of the ancient

atmosphere?• Answer: the world’s

archives• A huge refrigerator

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Midnight Sun Over Antarctica

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Antarctica

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EPICA

European Project of Ice Coring in Antarctica

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Drilling for Ice Samples

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Antarctica Continent

Twice size of the

USA

Driest place on earth

Winds up to 320

km/h

Among the highest

mountains

Bedrock

cloud

> 4 km of ice

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The Transarctic Mountains

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The Long Trip of a Tiny Snowflake

65% of the world’s drinking water

95% of the world’s ice

Yet a desert - very little precipitation

Story of a snowflake

Compression

Entrapped air

Bubbles of air in the iceVectorial forcesMovement (center to the shore)Fresh water icebergs!

Bedrock

cloud

> 4 km of ice

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An Iceberg!

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The Initial Project: Vostok Station

> 4 km deep

Bedrock

• Engineers drilled

down to 3,270 m

• Ice core represents:

400,000 years of

compacted ice

• Ancient atmosphere Vostok-Russian base

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Ice Core Samples

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Evolution of the Atmosphere Over the Last 400,000 years

Bedrock

Present day

400,000 years ago

They have to …drill “straight” down (through moving ice)

After that they have to take the “carrots” of ice up to the surface

Carrying out an engineering feat!

A shaft: roughly 3,200 m in depth

Taking the “samples back” … “the easy part”, but first…

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An Engineering Feat

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Research

• After Dating the ice samples (Carbon 14) • Measurements of radioactivity (visible traces of nuclear bombs)

• Correlation with identifiable volcanic eruptions in the past• Study of marine sediments

• Analysis of the entrapped air • Deuterium • Ratio 18 O to 16 O (isotopes) to determine the temperature

at formation • Greenhouse gases CO2 and methane (in bubbles)

– Variation of gases over the years

– Correlation between the quantity of these greenhouse gases and the temperature

– Temperature climate prevailing at different periods of time…

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Predictions

…over the next 100 years:

The least catastrophic: + 1.5° C

The most catastrophic: up to + 6° C…!

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Conclusion

• A rise of 0.7°C over the past century • Up to 21°C by 3000 (from 15°C today)• Kyoto Protocol of 1997: a first step – several

COP* meetings since then (*Conference of Parties)

• Urgent measures needed to limit production of harmful greenhouse gases

• Responsibility of both governments and citizens • Only way to save our planet for the generations

to come!

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Acknowledgements

We wish to thank the Laboratoire deGlaciologie de Grenoble

and its researchers, who participate in

EPICA

European Project of Ice Coring in Antarctica

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Thank you for your attention! 

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