LONDON: Imagine you are Sherlock Holmes bent on solving a mystery but the evidence is starting to crumble and eventually you will be left with worthless dust.
This is the worry which haunts ice scientists delving into Earth’s threatened glaciers. Deep inside them, the slumbering ice slabs hold information about Earth’s climate past, and pointers for the future. The frozen archive is formed from compacted layers snow which fell hundreds, thousands or even hundreds of thousands of years ago.
Learning more about the past through examining the glaciers could help us predict how our planet will respond when global warming kicks into higher gear — just decades from now, if predictions are right.
Only a tiny amount of this glacial material has ever been extracted and examined. And as temperatures rise, the fringes of many glaciers are softening to mush, threatening the survival of this precious testament.