Rapid Microstructure Analysis of Polar Ice Cores

With climate change and its implications for society and the Earth being a frequent topic in both politics and science, measureable data on the influence of mankind on current and past climate has become essential information for making predictions and decisions about future climate. The polar ice sheet provides information about temperature, precipitation as well as gas and aerosol concentration as a unique depiction of climate throughout hundreds of thousands of years. The information obtained from ice cores enables future climatic events as well as general material properties of ice to be better understood. The longest ice core drilled in Antarctica has a length of 3270 m and contains climate information dating back more than 800,000 years. The rapid analysis (minimum scan time 3 s) provided by the large area scan macroscope (LASM; Fig. 1) with a resolution of 5 μm has proven to be an essential tool for analyzing the microstructures of ice cores, both in the field and in the laboratory. A stratigraphic image that supports dating the ice cores can be obtained using Intermediate Layer Core Scanner.