Mont Blanc ice cores will be sent to Antarctica to preserve climate record
David Chazan, Paris
24 July 2016 • 5:40pm
Samples of ice from Mont Blanc are to be sent to Antarctica where they will be preserved for future research because glaciers in the French Alps are melting at an accelerating rate.
Future generations of scientists will be able to study climate change and the impact of pollution by using air bubbles trapped in the ice. The samples, which will be kept at the French-Italian Antarctic base of Concordia, will constitute “an invaluable scientific legacy,” said Jean Jouzel, a climatologist.
Researchers will be dropped by helicopter at an altitude of 4,300 metres on the Col du Dôme glacier next month and will spend two weeks drilling into the ice to collect samples 130 to 140 metres long.
They will provide a record of how the composition of the air and ice changed over a period of 150 years, revealing pollution from sulphur and nitrogen dioxide.
The effect of specific events such as the Chernobyl nuclear disaster, which caused a surge in the radioactive isotope Cesium 137 in snow that fell in 1986, may also be studied from the samples.
Alpine glaciers, which are huge sheets of snow and ice, are all shrinking, said Jérôme Chappellaz, a glaciologist. Scientists believe glaciers in the French Alps below than 3,500 metres will have vanished by the end of the century.
“At the Col du Dôme, we measured a temperature increase of 1.5 ºC in the space of 10 years,” Dr Chappellaz said. “The problem starts when the glacier reaches a positive surface temperature and starts melting, which disturbs the lower layers.”
Water seeps into the glacier, altering the chemistry of the ice. “The memory of the glacier is then damaged and risks being lost,” Dr Chappellaz said.
The cores will be airlifted to Antarctica in isothermal containters in the winter of 2019-20. They will be stored under 10 metres of snow at an average temperature of -54C to avoid any risk of a freezer break down or a power cut leading to them melting.
Scientists hope the samples can be preserved for decades or even centuries and will be designated "property of the international community" and discussions are in progress with Unesco and the UN Environment Programme over the preservation of cores.
A total of three samples will be taken, one of which will be kept in Europe for analysis with the remaining two sent to Antarctica. After the Alps, the team also want to take samples from the Andes to provide an ice record going back more than 20,000 years.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/07/24/mont-blanc-ice-cores-will-be-sent-to-antarctica-to-preserve-clim/
In
ancient Roman religion,
Concordia is the
goddess who embodies agreement in marriage and society. Her
Greek equivalent is usually regarded as
Harmonia, with
musical harmony a
metaphor for an ideal of social concord or
entente in the political
discourse of the
Republican era. She was thus often associated with
Pax ("Peace") in representing a stable society.
[1] As such, she is more closely related to the Greek concept of
homonoia (
likemindedness), which was also represented by
a goddess.
[2]
Concordia Augusta was
cultivated in the context of
Imperial cult. Dedicatory inscriptions to her, on behalf of emperors and members of the imperial family, were common.
[3]
まあ要するに150年ほどの汚腐乱巣派の負の歴史の証拠が温存されてしまうわけです。（爆ｗｗｗｗｗｗｗ
