New, highly detailed Antarctic climate records from before and during the industrial era will be revealed for the first time during a major expedition to the southern continent later this year.

Australia is to lead an international team of 15 partner organisations’ scientists from Australia, China, Denmark, France, Germany and the United States to drill a 2000 to 3000-year ice core at Aurora Basin in east Antarctica, in a bid to fill knowledge gaps in the science community’s climate records.

Over six weeks, between December 2013 and January 2014, 24 scientists working in two field teams will drill a 400 metre-long ice core at the remote site, 550 kms from Australia’s Casey station.

Project leader and Australian Antarctic Division senior glaciologist, Dr Mark Curran, said that the ice core will fill a significant gap in an array of 2000-year ice core climate records distributed across Antarctica.

“Additionally, two shorter cores of about 120m and covering the last 1000 years will also be drilled for further studies on climate and ice properties,” Dr Curran said.

“Air pumped from the borehole of one of the cores and bubbles trapped in the ice cores together will allow us to look at changes in atmospheric composition over this period.

“As well as revealing climate records from the industrial era, the ice core information will also help scientists identify linkages between Antarctic and Australian climate.”

Ice cores provide crucial information on past climate and climate processes that is critical to understanding climate and predicting future change. Modern techniques will allow the field team to make isotope measurements that reveal past temperatures at the site.

Further laboratory measurements on the returned ice cores will be used to explore past changes in winds, sea-ice, volcanic activity and solar variability.

Antarctic ice cores, in particular, provide information from a region of the planet where we have only short observational records and there is a need for further insight into the role of Antarctica in the global climate system.

The Aurora Basin project has been several years in the planning. Considerable logistics are required to move accommodation and equipment to support the team, with most of this being transported to the site on an overland traverse by heavy vehicles.

In all, around 26 tonnes of camp and drilling equipment will be carried across 1300 kms of the windswept and hostile icecap.

The traverse, to be managed by a 14-strong team of colleagues from the French station Dumont d’Urville, will be joined by the Australian Antarctic Division’s head of Climate Processes and Change, Dr Tas van Ommen.

“The traverse route which climbs from sea level to an altitude of 2694 metres will take around 12–15 days, depending on the weather,” Dr van Ommen said.

“On arrival at the site, the traverse team will establish the camp and prepare a skiway on the ice readiness for the arrival of remaining colleagues by aircraft.

“Conditions will be very challenging for everyone. At Aurora Basin we can expect temperatures ranging from between −25 to −30C degrees on a good day, so a warm living space is essential. A large communal kitchen and living tent will form the heart of the camp where kerosene heating will help warm the interior to around zero, or a few degrees above.

“Other large tents for drilling and core processing, will protect scientists from blizzard conditions outside, but will not be heated. A range of smaller, single-person, polar pyramid tents will be used for sleeping.

“The camp will be set up in a way that will enable its full breakdown and retrieval by air at the end of the field season, eliminating the need for a traverse exit,” Dr van Ommen said.

Aurora Basin is the ideal site for the research as it has sufficient snowfall of about 13cm of ice per year; enough to provide the first record of year-to-year changes over the past 2000 years in this region of the continent.

on