From Antarctica to Brussels, hunting climate clues in old ice - Islam Al-Sharaa
'We want to know a lot about the climates of the past because we can use it as an analogy for what can happen in the future,' said Harry Zekollari, a glaciologist at Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB). Zekollari was part of a team of four that headed to the white continent in November on a mission to find some of the world's oldest ice -- without breaking the bank. Ice dating back millions of years can be found deep inside Antarctica, close to the South Pole, buried under kilometers of fresher ice and snow.
But that's hard to reach and expeditions to drill it out are expensive. A recent EU-funded mission that brought back some 1.2-million-year-old samples came with a total price tag of around 11 million euros (around $12.8 million). To cut costs, the team from VUB and the nearby Universite Libre de Bruxelles (ULB) used satellite data and other clues to find areas where ancient ice might be more accessible.
Belgian scientists handle a blue ice sample in a laboratory in Brussels.
Belgian scientists holds blue ice samples in a laboratory in Brussels.
Blue ice
Just like the water it is made of, ice flows towards the coast -- albeit slowly, explained Maaike Izeboud, a remote sensing specialist at VUB. And when the flow hits an obstacle, say a ridge or mountain, bottom layers can be pushed up closer to the surface. In a few rare spots, weather conditions like heavy winds prevent the formation of snow cover -- leaving thick layers of ice exposed.
Named after their coloration, which contrasts with the whiteness of the rest of the continent, these account for only about one percent of Antarctica territory. 'Blue ice areas are very special,' said Izeboud. Her team zeroed in on a blue ice stretch lying about 2,300 meters (7,500 feet) above sea level, around 60 kilometers (37 miles) from Belgium's Princess Elisabeth Antarctica Research Station.
Some old meteorites had been previously found there -- a hint that the surrounding ice is also old, the researchers explained. A container camp was set up and after a few weeks of measurements, drilling, and frozen meals, in January the team came back with 15 ice cores totaling about 60 meters in length. These were then shipped from South Africa to Belgium, where they arrived in late June.
Inside a stocky cement ULB building in the Belgian capital, they are now being cut into smaller pieces to then be shipped to specialized labs in France and China for dating. Zekollari said the team hopes some of the samples, which were taken at shallow depths of about 10 meters, will be confirmed to be about 100,000 years old.
Climate 'treasure hunt'
This would allow them to go back and dig a few hundred meters deeper in the same spot for the big prize. 'It's like a treasure hunt,' Zekollari, 36, said, comparing their work to drawing a map for 'Indiana Jones'. 'We're trying to cross the good spot on the map... and in one and a half years, we'll go back and we'll drill there,' he said. 'We're dreaming a bit, but we hope to get maybe three, four, five-million-year-old ice.'
Such ice could provide crucial input to climatologists studying the effects of global warming. Climate projections and models are calibrated using existing data on past temperatures and greenhouse gases in the atmosphere -- but the puzzle has some missing pieces.
By the end of the century temperatures could reach levels similar to those the planet last experienced between 2.6 and 3.3 million years ago, said Etienne Legrain, 29, a paleo-climatologist at ULB. But currently there is little data on what CO2 levels were back then -- a key metric to understand how much further warming we could expect. 'We don't know the link between CO2 concentration and temperature in a climate warmer than that of today,' Legrain said. His team hopes to find it trapped inside some very old ice. 'The air bubbles are the atmosphere of the past,' he said. 'It's really like magic when you feel it.'- — AFP
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Kuwait Times
5 days ago
- Kuwait Times
Polar bear biopsies to shed light on Arctic pollutants
With one foot braced on the helicopter's landing skid, a veterinarian lifted his air rifle, took aim and fired a tranquillizer dart at a polar bear. The predator bolted but soon slumped into the snowdrifts, its broad frame motionless beneath the Arctic sky. The dramatic pursuit formed part of a pioneering research mission in Norway's Svalbard archipelago, where scientists, for the first time, took fat tissue biopsies from polar bears to study the impact of pollutants on their health. The expedition came at a time when the Arctic region was warming at four times the global average, putting mounting pressure on the iconic predators as their sea-ice habitat shrank. 'The idea is to show as accurately as possible how the bears live in the wild - but in a lab,' Laura Pirard, a Belgian toxicologist, told AFP. 'To do this, we take their (fatty) tissue, cut it in very thin slices and expose it to the stresses they face, in other words pollutants and stress hormones,' said Pirard, who developed the method. Moments after the bear collapsed, the chopper circled back and landed. Researchers spilled out, boots crunching on the snow. One knelt by the bear's flank, cutting thin strips of fatty tissue. Another drew blood. Each sample was sealed and labelled before the bear was fitted with a satellite collar. Scientists said that while the study monitors all the bears, only females were tracked with GPS collars as their necks are smaller than their heads - unlike males, who cannot keep a collar on for more than a few minutes. This photograph taken with a thermical-infrared camera shows the head of the Polar Bear Program Jon Aars (right) changing the GPS collar of a female polar bear, in front of Norwegian veterinarian Rolf Arne Olberg (right) measuring a big polar bear male (left) in eastern Spitzbergen.--AFP French scientist Marie-Anne Blanchet (right) and Norwegian scientist Magnus Andersen take a badipose biopsie on a just sedated big polar bear male, in eastern Spitzbergen, in the Svalbard archipelago. French spatial scientist Marie-Anne Blanchet examines bear cubs before taking adipose tissue biopsies and blood samples from their sedated mother. French scientist Marie-Anne Blanchet (right) and Norwegian scientist Magnus Andersen take a badipose biopsie on a just sedated big polar bear male. French scientist Marie-Anne Blanchet walks past a helicopter as she brings biopsies in a thermos to the toxicolgists onboard "Kronprins Haakon" vessel. Belgian toxicologist Laura Pirard (right), specialized in marine mammals, tests the 'Slice' method on polar bear adipose tissue biopsies, with Finnnish toxicologist specialized in marine mammals, Heli Routti (left), in a laboratory onboard the science icebreaking vessel 'Kronprins Haakon' while sailing in eastern Spitzbergen. Belgian toxicologist Laura Pirard, specialized in marine mammals, shows biopsy slices samples of polar bears adipose tissue, in a laboratory onboard the science icebreaker vessel 'Kronprins Haakon'. The head of the Polar Bear Program, Jon Aars (second right) from Norway adresses a briefing to scientists, Marie-Anne Blanchet (second left) from France, Laura Pirard (top left) from Belgium, Sofie Soderstrom from Sweden, helicopter pilot Stig Folid (right) from Norway and helicopter mechanic Elias birkeflet (left) from Norway, in eastern Spitzbergen, while sailing to the Svalbard archipelago onboard the 'Kronprins Haakon'. This photograph shows a sedated female polar bear with a GPS collar and her two cubs. This photograph shows blood samples of polar bears. This photograph shows two adipose biopsies of polar bears. This photograph shows the scientific ice-going vessel "Kronprins Haakon" sailing through the sea ice in eastern Spitzbergen. This photograph shows a helicopter looking for traces of polar bears near glaciers. A male polar bear bear walks on the sea ice near glaciers. Finnnish toxicologist specialized in marine mammals Heli Routti poses in the Scientific Ice going vessel "Kronprins Haakon". Arctic lab For the scientists aboard the Norwegian Polar Institute's research vessel Kronprins Haakon, these fleeting encounters were the culmination of months of planning and decades of Arctic fieldwork. In a makeshift lab on the icebreaker, samples remained usable for several days, subjected to controlled doses of pollutants and hormones before being frozen for further analysis back on land. Each tissue fragment gave Pirard and her colleagues insight into the health of an animal that spent much of its life on sea ice. Analysis of the fat samples showed that the main pollutants present were per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) - synthetic chemicals used in industry and consumer goods that linger in the environment for decades. Despite years of exposure, Svalbard's polar bears showed no signs of emaciation or ill health, according to the team. The local population has remained stable or even increased slightly, unlike parts of Canada, where the Western Hudson Bay group declined by 27 percent between 2016 and 2021, from 842 to 618 bears, according to a government aerial survey. Other populations in the Canadian Arctic, including the Southern Beaufort Sea, have also shown long-term declines linked to reduced prey access and longer ice-free seasons. Scientists estimate there are around 300 polar bears in the Svalbard archipelago and roughly 2,000 in the broader region stretching from the North Pole to the Barents Sea. The team found no direct link between sea ice loss and higher concentrations of pollutants in Svalbard's bears. Instead, differences in pollutant levels came down to the bears' diet. Two types of bears - sedentary and pelagic - feed on different prey, leading to different chemicals building up in their bodies. Changing diet With reduced sea ice, the bears' diets have already started shifting, researchers said. These behavioral adaptations appeared to help maintain the population's health. 'They still hunt seals but they also take reindeer (and) eggs. They even eat grass (seaweed), even though that has no energy for them,' Jon Aars, the head of the Svalbard polar bear program, told AFP. 'If they have very little sea ice, they necessarily need to be on land,' he said, adding that they spend 'much more time on land than they used to... 20 or 30 years ago'. This season alone, Aars and his team of marine toxicologists and spatial behavior experts captured 53 bears, fitted 17 satellite collars, and tracked 10 mothers with cubs or yearlings. 'We had a good season,' Aars said. The team's innovations go beyond biopsies. Last year, they attached small 'health log' cylinders to five females, recording their pulse and temperature. Combined with GPS data, the devices offer a detailed record of how the bears roam, how they rest and what they endure. Polar bears were once hunted freely across Svalbard but since an international protection agreement in 1976, the population here has slowly recovered. The team's findings may help explain how the bears' world is changing, and at an alarming rate. As the light faded and the icebreaker's engines hummed against the vast silence, the team packed away their tools, leaving the Arctic wilderness to its inhabitants. — AFP
Kuwait Times
20-07-2025
- Kuwait Times
From Antarctica to Brussels, hunting climate clues in old ice - Islam Al-Sharaa
In a small, refrigerated room at a Brussels university, parka-wearing scientists chop up Antarctic ice cores tens of thousands of years old in search of clues to our planet's changing climate. Trapped inside the cylindrical icicles are tiny air bubbles that can provide a snapshot of what the earth's atmosphere looked like back then. 'We want to know a lot about the climates of the past because we can use it as an analogy for what can happen in the future,' said Harry Zekollari, a glaciologist at Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB). Zekollari was part of a team of four that headed to the white continent in November on a mission to find some of the world's oldest ice -- without breaking the bank. Ice dating back millions of years can be found deep inside Antarctica, close to the South Pole, buried under kilometers of fresher ice and snow. But that's hard to reach and expeditions to drill it out are expensive. A recent EU-funded mission that brought back some 1.2-million-year-old samples came with a total price tag of around 11 million euros (around $12.8 million). To cut costs, the team from VUB and the nearby Universite Libre de Bruxelles (ULB) used satellite data and other clues to find areas where ancient ice might be more accessible. Belgian scientists handle a blue ice sample in a laboratory in Brussels. Belgian scientists holds blue ice samples in a laboratory in Brussels. Blue ice Just like the water it is made of, ice flows towards the coast -- albeit slowly, explained Maaike Izeboud, a remote sensing specialist at VUB. And when the flow hits an obstacle, say a ridge or mountain, bottom layers can be pushed up closer to the surface. In a few rare spots, weather conditions like heavy winds prevent the formation of snow cover -- leaving thick layers of ice exposed. Named after their coloration, which contrasts with the whiteness of the rest of the continent, these account for only about one percent of Antarctica territory. 'Blue ice areas are very special,' said Izeboud. Her team zeroed in on a blue ice stretch lying about 2,300 meters (7,500 feet) above sea level, around 60 kilometers (37 miles) from Belgium's Princess Elisabeth Antarctica Research Station. Some old meteorites had been previously found there -- a hint that the surrounding ice is also old, the researchers explained. A container camp was set up and after a few weeks of measurements, drilling, and frozen meals, in January the team came back with 15 ice cores totaling about 60 meters in length. These were then shipped from South Africa to Belgium, where they arrived in late June. Inside a stocky cement ULB building in the Belgian capital, they are now being cut into smaller pieces to then be shipped to specialized labs in France and China for dating. Zekollari said the team hopes some of the samples, which were taken at shallow depths of about 10 meters, will be confirmed to be about 100,000 years old. Climate 'treasure hunt' This would allow them to go back and dig a few hundred meters deeper in the same spot for the big prize. 'It's like a treasure hunt,' Zekollari, 36, said, comparing their work to drawing a map for 'Indiana Jones'. 'We're trying to cross the good spot on the map... and in one and a half years, we'll go back and we'll drill there,' he said. 'We're dreaming a bit, but we hope to get maybe three, four, five-million-year-old ice.' Such ice could provide crucial input to climatologists studying the effects of global warming. Climate projections and models are calibrated using existing data on past temperatures and greenhouse gases in the atmosphere -- but the puzzle has some missing pieces. By the end of the century temperatures could reach levels similar to those the planet last experienced between 2.6 and 3.3 million years ago, said Etienne Legrain, 29, a paleo-climatologist at ULB. But currently there is little data on what CO2 levels were back then -- a key metric to understand how much further warming we could expect. 'We don't know the link between CO2 concentration and temperature in a climate warmer than that of today,' Legrain said. His team hopes to find it trapped inside some very old ice. 'The air bubbles are the atmosphere of the past,' he said. 'It's really like magic when you feel it.'- — AFP
Kuwait Times
23-06-2025
- Kuwait Times
Groundbreaking Vera Rubin Observatory reveals first images
The team behind the long-awaited Vera Rubin Observatory in Chile published their first images on Monday, revealing breathtaking views of star-forming regions as well as distant galaxies. More than two decades in the making, the giant US-funded telescope sits perched at the summit of Cerro Pachon in central Chile, where dark skies and dry air provide ideal conditions for observing the cosmos. One of the debut images is a composite of 678 exposures taken over just seven hours, capturing the Trifid Nebula and the Lagoon Nebula - both several thousand light-years from Earth - glowing in vivid pinks against orange-red backdrops. The image reveals these stellar nurseries within our Milky Way in unprecedented detail, with previously faint or invisible features now clearly visible. Another image offers a sweeping view of the Virgo Cluster of galaxies. The team also released a video dubbed the 'cosmic treasure chest,' which begins with a close-up of two galaxies before zooming out to reveal approximately 10 million more. This undated handout image released by NSF-DOE shows a combination of 678 separate images taken by NSF-DOE Vera C. Rubin Observatory in just over seven hours of observing time. 'The Rubin Observatory is an investment in our future, which will lay down a cornerstone of knowledge today on which our children will proudly build tomorrow,' said Michael Kratsios, director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. Equipped with an advanced 8.4-meter telescope and the largest digital camera ever built, the Rubin Observatory is supported by a powerful data-processing system. Later this year, it will begin its flagship project, the Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST). Over the next decade, it will scan the night sky nightly, capturing even the subtlest visible changes with unmatched precision. The observatory is named after pioneering American astronomer Vera C. Rubin, whose research provided the first conclusive evidence for the existence of dark matter - a mysterious substance that does not emit light but exerts gravitational influence on galaxies. Dark energy refers to the equally mysterious and immensely powerful force believed to be driving the accelerating expansion of the universe. Together, dark matter and dark energy are thought to make up 95 percent of the cosmos, yet their true nature remains unknown. The observatory, a joint initiative of the US National Science Foundation and Department of Energy, has also been hailed as one of the most powerful tools ever built for tracking asteroids. In just 10 hours of observations, the Rubin Observatory discovered 2,104 previously undetected asteroids in our solar system, including seven near-Earth objects - all of which pose no threat. For comparison, all other ground- and space-based observatories combined discover about 20,000 new asteroids per year. Rubin is also set to be the most effective observatory at spotting interstellar objects passing through the solar system. More images from the observatory are expected to be released later Monday morning. - AFP
