Ocean Notorious by Matt Vance

Author:Matt Vance
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Awa Press

Nansen’s Fram in Arctic pack ice, 1894.

Glenys’s iceberg, rolling slowly on a dull grey ocean, is whiter than you could ever imagine white to be. Bergs get their colour from bubbles of air, compressed and trapped in the ice. In recent years the bubbles have served another purpose: to provide information about Earth’s atmosphere in times past. The Antarctic icesheet is up to four kilometres thick in places, so samples of the ice can tell scientists about the atmosphere as far back as 200,000 years. That’s more than far enough to record major climate-altering events, like volcanic eruptions, and thoughtless sins of the human race such as coal-fired steam engines and nuclear testing.

‘Thousands of ice cores have been drilled from the East Antarctic ice cap,’ I tell Glenys, ‘and they all show two things. First, Earth’s climate is unstable and fragile. Secondly, the human race has developed in a rare period of mild climate stability.’ Glenys nods her head politely but keeps her eyes firmly on the birds.

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