CTV Edmonton: Millennia-old ice core will be studied at University of Alberta

Researchers in Alberta will have the chance to study the ancient world through an ice core that will be brought from the arctic.

A team led by the University of Manitoba is researching the prehistoric climate of the high arctic on Axel Heiberg Island in northern Nunavut at the Müller Ice Cap.

The team plans to drill an ice cap core around 600 metres long, the depth of the bedrock below the island, and 10 centimetres thick, cut the core up and send it to a variety of labs in Canada and Europe for research and measurements.

The hope is that the ice core contains a record of climate and sea ice in northern Canada over the past 4,000-20,000 years. Work suggests that the Müller Ice Cap has survived throughout the Holocene period, which began 11,700 years ago at the end of the last major ice age.

To read the entire story and to see the ice core samples, please follow the link to CTV Edmonton.