Holding History: Dr. Rosales Examines Ice Core Dating Back 420,000 Years

Dr. Rosales attended an ice core workshop at the US Geological Survey’s Ice Core Facility in Colorado. The daylong workshop was a side event to the International Conference on Arctic Research Planning and associated Arctic Science Summit Week conference in Boulder, CO where he presented his latest research findings. Here you see Dr. Rosales holding the bottom part of the famous Vostok ice core that the Russians drilled in the 1950s over the course of 10 years. The ice is 420,000 years old and is used to measure greenhouse gas concentrations and atmospheric temperatures going back in time. The abundance of CO₂ in the ice bubbles in the core he is holding may be around 280 ppm. Today the concentration is 425 ppm. This core allows us to establish baselines of greenhouse gas concentrations to better understand climatic change.