Volcanic Dust Will Help Find Antarctic Ice Age

Press, Volume XCVI, Issue 28397, 2 October 1957, Page 12

Volcanic Dust Will Help Find Antarctic Ice Age

Volcanic dust from New Zealand volcanoes would help glaciologists to determine the age of Antarctic ice layers and in this would be “an excellent record of the past,” said Mr Ernest W. Marshall, glaciologist, of Lavonia. New Hampshire, the United States, in Christchurch yesterday. Next month, Mr Marshall will lead a group of nine men in one of the “most difficult undertakings of the season’s glaciological projects” in Antarctica. At Byrd Station they will attempt to drill 1000 feet into the ice to study the successive layers so that the climatic history of the ice cap can be deduced.

Deep-drilling The development of deepdrilling techniques results from a research programme in the Greenland icecap, where ice layers that formed in the tenth century were found. Dust layers of the eruptions of Katmai, in 1912, and Krakatoa, in 1883, were found. Mr Marshall hopes to find dust horizons of these eruptions at Byrd Station, along with volcanic dust from the eruptions of Mount Egmont, 400 years ago, and Mount Erebus at McMurdo Sound. The method of determining the age involves the melting down of the recovered core and filtration to recover the minute dust particles. To enable the work to be carried out in all weathers the drill will be covered by a special nylon tent.

It will be possible to determine from what part of the world the dust came, and this will give much information on the distribution of winds and air mass movements between the hemispheres. Similar work will be carried out by Dr. Paul Siple at the South Pole. Ice Core As the ice core is retrieved from the drilling site, one half will be kept for future study and the other half will be flown to the United States for laboratory studies.

A New Zealander. Mr Anthony Gow. will serve with Mr Marshall as assistant glaciologist. On completion of the Antarctic work he will go to the Unite' States for further work with Mr Marshall at the Snow. Ice and Permafrost Research Establishment, at Illinois. Mr Gow is 26 and graduated B.Sc. m chemistry from Victoria University in 1954. He studied geology in 1955 and is now completing an M.Sc. thesis in petrology and mineralogy. Since April he has been a fulltime demonstrator in the geology department of Victoria College