Store Of Antarctic Ice In Columbus, Ohio

Press, Volume CII, Issue 30277, 1 November 1963, Page 6

Store Of Antarctic Ice In Columbus, Ohio

Dozens of large cylinders of Antarctic ice are stored in a room in the Institute of Polar Studies at Columbus. Ohio, as the basis of research on such matters as the rate of accumulation of the ice, the past history' of the continental ice-sheets, and the source and circumstances of deposition of the very fine crust which forms layers in the ice.

The director of the institute, Dr. R P. Goldthwait, who is now in the Lake Pukaki district with members of the New Zealand Geological Survey, described the institute’s work and its plans for this summer in the Antarctic when he was in Christchurch recently. Dr. Goldttiwait will himself leave for

Antarctica in a few days as one of a party from the institute who will carry on stratigraphic work in the Amundsen Glacier area of the Queen Maud Range in the R>ss Dependency. In some cases the cylinders —cores of ice about 31n in diameter cut by vertical drilling to at least 10 metres —are examined on the spot in Antarctic laboratories. Those to be transported to Columbus are chopped into lengths of one metre, each section being wrapped in a plastic envelope and then put into a sealed tube.

At the institute, the cores are kept in a temperature of Odeg Fahrenheit; the neighbouring cold laboratory where they are examined is at 15deg Fahrenheit (Also in the storeroom, incidentally, are such items as frozen seat and samples of “permafrost”—permanently frozen soil.)

The dust in the ice is very fine, the particles being mostly of the order of one macron long, a micron being

one-millionth of a metre (one twenty-fifth-tthousandth of an inch). The dust comes partly from meteors, pertly from volcanic eruptions, and partly from general terrestrial sources: there is no reason to think there is not a similar fall-out in other regions, but outside Antarctica the deposits are completely masked by local dust. The meteoric dust, which contains a high proportion of nickel and iron, occurs cyclically, coming to a maximum at periods of what, from the evidence of seasonal icegrenuJatton, is every two yeans: the scientists carrying out the work, however, are suspicious of this and are looking for an explanation which would make the period one year. The volcanic dust occurs sporadically, and it has been possible to correlate the tames of arrival of this type of dust with major eruptions in all parte of the world; it is composed of tiny fragments of glass. Identification of the dust is mostly carried out by mass spectrometry. The electron probe microscope is ateo used; but the identification of each particle costs about 100 dollars.

Similar work is being carried out at two other institutions in the United States.

Dr. Goktthwait’s visit to South Canterbury is at the invitation of the Geological Survey, to point out certain features he observed while here as a Fulbright scholar in 1957.