deep ice drilling

Deep ice drilling is the process of creating narrow, precise holes in thick ice sheets, like those in Antarctica or Greenland, to access and analyze the ice core layers. Using specialized drilling equipment, scientists bore through hundreds to thousands of meters of ice, extracting long cylinders called ice cores. These cores contain trapped air bubbles, particles, and isotopic information that reveal Earth’s past climate, atmospheric composition, and environmental changes over hundreds of thousands of years. The data obtained helps scientists understand climate patterns, ice sheet history, and the effects of global warming.