Swiss‑led team retrieves longest‑ever Antarctic drill core

A Swiss‑led research team has extracted a 228‑metre drill core from beneath the Antarctic ice sheet. This is the longest ever recovered from sediments below any ice sheet. + Get the most important news from Switzerland in your inbox According to the federal technology institute ETH Zurich, the drill core will help scientists better predict how global warming could affect future sea levels. The team aims to use it to pinpoint the temperatures at which the Antarctic ice sheet begins to melt. The 29‑member team, drawn from ten countries and co‑led by ETH Zurich and the Swiss Federal Institute for Forest, Snow and Landscape Research (WSL), spent ten weeks in a remote camp on the Ross Ice Shelf, some 700 kilometres from the nearest research station. Earlier drilling attempts failed To reach the hard‑to‑access sediments, the team first melted a shaft through 523 metres of ice. They then drilled a further 228 metres into the seabed beneath West Antarctica. + Predicting the climate of the ...