ACEX: Arctic Coring Expedition
Rising sea levels threaten millions of people around the world, which is why understanding how global warming could affect the Polar ice sheet is one of today's most vital scientific issues.
But when, how and why did the Arctic ice form in the first place? What effect has the Arctic Ocean had on past global climate and ocean currents?
These questions have puzzled scientists for many years, and now we have the opportunity to help to answer them and to better to understand the processes causing the ice sheets to diminish.
So far we only have a detailed understanding of the latter stages of the ice age. This comes chiefly from the Greenland ice cores which tell us of the last 250,000 years of Arctic history. The only detailed global climate data for earlier times comes from cores collected deep from beneath the ocean floor.
However, no one has ever collected cores from deep beneath the floor of Arctic Ocean.