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LAKEWOOD, Colo. — History and science are sitting inside a giant freezer at the Denver Federal Center. The National Science Foundation Ice Core Facility is home to tens of thousands of ice cores, drilled from Antarctica and Greenland, for scientists to research.
“This is the only facility like this in the United States. It basically acts as the central repository for all the ice cores drilled as part of the U.S. polar program,” Richard Nunn, the facility’s assistant curator, told Denver7.
The International Partnerships in Ice Core Sciences (IPICS) will hold its 3rd Open Science Conference on 18-23 October 2020 in Crans-Montana, Switzerland.
Ice cores provide information about past climate and environmental conditions as well as direct records of the composition of the atmosphere on timescales from decades to hundreds of millennia. With the pioneering work of Hans Oeschger of University of Bern on carbon dioxide in polar ice cores, a long tradition of ice core research in Switzerland began. Less known is that Hans Oeschger also initiated a high-alpine drilling project on Colle Gnifetti in Switzerland in the 1970s. To acknowledge Hans Oeschger’s important contribution to these two ice core fields and to foster the link between the corresponding communities the theme of the conference is Ice Core Science at the three Poles.
Dirk Hobman wants to take people on a journey through time, drilling down through frigid layers of history, past the era of the first Homo sapiens, to 200,000 years ago. That’s where his work begins.
Merging his backgrounds in ecology and photography, Hobman tells stories of the natural world. His most recent project, “The Color of Ice,” takes viewers into the frozen annals of ice cores, turning them into colorful masterpieces of paleoclimatology. The project hinged on his ability to sell the idea to the archive at the National Science Foundation Ice Core Facility in Lakewood.
The Fall 2017 In-Depth newsletter from the National Ice Core Laboratory-Science Management Office (NICL-SMO) is now available online at https://icecores.org/indepth/
In the Fall 2017 issue:
Icy air reveals human-made methane levels higher than previously believed
:: Lindsey Valich, University of Rochester
A summer job in sub-zero temperatures
:: Ula Chrobak, CU Boulder Today
Massive Antarctic volcanic eruptions linked to abrupt southern hemisphere climate changes near the end of the last ice age
:: Joe McConnell, Roger Kreidberg, and Justin Broglio, Desert Research Institute
Dr. Julie Palais awarded Richardson Medal
:: International Glaciological Society
LC-130 Skibird aircrews train for polar operations
:: Air Force Master Sgt. Catherine Schmidt, 109th Airlift Wing, U.S. Department of Defense News
109th takes off to support 30th ODF season
:: Staff Sgt. Stephanie J. Lambert, 109th AW Public Affairs, 109th Airlift Wing News
We are interested in project stories and news from the ice coring community. Please contact us ( nicl.smo@unh.edu ) if you are interested in submitting a story or news item to In-Depth.
The thermostat may read 90 degrees Fahrenheit outside the sprawling federal research complex in Lakewood, Colorado, but inside, CU Boulder undergraduate student Casey Vanderheyden is donning a bulky winter coat, gloves and boots as though she is headed to the South Pole.
All around the world, scientists are building repositories of everything from seeds to ice to mammal milk — racing to preserve a natural order that is fast disappearing.
You may have never heard of it, but one of the world's most important archives on climate change is right here in Colorado. The National Ice Core Laboratory in West Denver holds records on the atmosphere going back hundreds of thousands of years. The data at NICL isn't stored on disks or in books. Inside the freezer, aisles are stacked floor-to-ceiling with silver cylinders about the length of your arm. Each tube holds ice cores recovered from polar regions of the planet.
The Fall 2016 In-Depth newsletter from the National Ice Core Laboratory-Science Management Office (NICL-SMO) is now available online at https://icecores.org/indepth/
In the Fall 2016 issue:
Dr. Lindsay Powers hired as NICL's Technical Director
:: NICL
Ice flow and ice cores in the St. Elias Mountains
:: Karl Kreutz and Seth Campbell, University of Maine
Ancient ice reveals vital clues about Earth's past climate
:: Dan Elliot, Associated Press
Leading UMaine researcher perishes in accident in Antarctica
:: UMaine News, University of Maine
We are interested in project stories and news from the ice coring community. Please contact us ( nicl.smo@unh.edu ) if you are interested in submitting a story or news item to In-Depth.
It's -30 degrees Celsius, even though the Sun hangs ceaselessly in the sky. Dressed in puffy, insulated suits and gloves thick enough to both hinder dexterity and preserve fingers, a team gamely tilts a drill barrel back to horizontal. With one smooth, firm motion, a two-meter-long cylinder of ice, bursting with history, is pushed free and slides down a temporary work bench.
Inside a huge walk-in freezer in suburban Denver, a college student in a thick parka shoots a jolt of electricity through a yard-long column of ice extracted from Antarctica. Just outside the freezer, in a much warmer room, a computer wired to the ice registers a sudden spike in a jagged red line crawling across the screen.