Frozen stories in the polar ice
Keywords:
ice core, isotopes, iron contamination, glaciers, global warmingAbstract
Ice… We rarely think about it, if it is not to cool our lemonade or sodas. However, it covers a tenth of the land area of Earth, and far from being still, ice keeps stories and memories in the dust particles and the air bubbles trapped inside it. In particular, ice sheets and glaciers have kept the story of humankind, life and even the evolution of Earth and our Solar System.
In this article I am going to tell you a couple of the many –many– stories that are frozen in perpetual terrestrial ice. First, I will talk about the lead particles trapped in the North Pole and how they can tell the history of humanity. Secondly, we will jump to space and reconstruct the story of our Solar System, through the frozen Beryllium records. Finally, I will tell you the risk that climate change possesses to this frozen memory, and all we could lose if ice sheets melt.
References
McConnell, J. R., Wilson, A. I., Stohl, A., Arienzo, M. M., Chellman, N. J., Eckhardt, S., Thompson, E. M., Pollard, A. M. & Steffensen, J. P. (2018). Lead pollution recorded in Greenland ice indicates European emissions tracked plagues, wars, and imperial expansion during antiquity. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 115(22), 5726-5731. doi: https://doi.org/ 10.1073/pnas.1721818115.
Petit, J. R., Jouzel, J., Raynaud, D., Barkov, N. I., Barnola, J. M., Basile, I., Bender, M, Chappellaz, J., Davis, M., Delaygue, G., Delmotte, M., Kotlyakov, V. M., Legrand, M., Lipenkov, V. Y., Lorius, C., PÉpin, L., Ritz, C., Saltzman, E. & Stievenard, M. (1999). Climate and atmospheric history of the past 420,000 years from the Vostok ice core, Antarctica. Nature, 399(6735), 429. doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/20859.
Steinhilber, F., Abreu, J. A., Beer, J., Brunner, I., Christl, M., Fischer, H., Heikkilä, U., Kubik, P. W., Mann, M., McCracken, K. G., Miller, H., Miyahara, H., Oerter, H. & Frank Wilhelms (2012). 9,400 years of cosmic radiation and solar activity from ice cores and tree rings. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 109(16), 5967-5971. doi: https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1118965109.
Published
Issue
Section
License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
Revista Digital Universitaria es editada por la Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México se distribuye bajo una Licencia Creative Commons Atribución-NoComercial 4.0 Internacional. Basada en una obra en http://revista.unam.mx/.
