• Email Bluesky Facebook LinkedIn Reddit Whatsapp X Researchers on the SWAIS2C project camped on the ice - the site is 700 kilometres from the nearest Antarctic station.Credit: Ana Tovey/SWAIS2C An international team of scientists has returned from the heart of West Antarctica with 228 metres of ancient rock and mud, the longest core ever retrieved from below an ice sheet. • Preliminary dating, based on the presence of fossilized algae that only existed during specific geological periods, suggests that the core represents an archive of the past 23 million years. • This includes periods when Earth’s average surface temperature was hotter than today’s - and higher than the temperature projected for 2100 under current global climate policies. • The core was retrieved as part of the Sensitivity of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet to 2 °C (SWAIS2C) project. • It aims to determine how far the West Antarctic Ice Sheet retreated during previous periods of global warming, and whether there is a temperature threshold after which its retreat becomes irreversible. • Antarctica holds most of the world’s fresh water locked up in ice.
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