Sending ice to Antarctica
By Sara Lentati
Scientists are planning to ship ice to the Antarctic. They're afraid that mountain glaciers around the world are melting as a result of climate change and want to store samples of ice in a new vault in the coldest place on Earth.
At 4,350m the Col du Dome sits just below the summit of Mont Blanc.
Covered in snow, it appears to be a permanent, frozen fixture in the Alps - but looks can be deceptive.
"In 1994 we measured the temperature inside the glacier and in 2005 we went to the same place and we saw a warming of 1.5C," says Jerome Chappellaz, of the French National Centre for Scientific Research which is involved in creating a new ice store in the Antarctic.
"When it comes to non-polar glaciers, because of global warming, a lot of them are going to disappear this century and those at the highest altitudes are already experiencing summer melting.
"We are probably the only scientific community whose archive is in danger of disappearing from the face of the planet. If you work on corals, on marine sediments, on tree rings, the raw material is still here and will be for many centuries," he says.
more
http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-32802588
