The Ice Chronicles: The Quest to Understand Global Climate Change

2 | The Making of an Ice Core “Time Machine”

ç 2 The Making of an Ice Core “Time Machine” I n 1988, the U.S. researchers involved in ice coring presented a proposal to the National Science Foundation to spend $25 million on a project called the Greenland Ice Sheet Project Two ( GISP2) over a five-year period. About half the funds were targeted to logistical elements of the project (aircraft, ice core drills, field laboratories), and half to the institutions (there were twenty-five by the time of funding) that would participate. Everyone knew that it was a substantial amount of money for this kind of research, but it was minuscule compared with other government programs. Going to the Moon had cost $25 billion, while the GISP2 budget amounted to only $100,000 per participating institution per year to support students, staff, equipment, travel, analyses, and supplies. By now, we had a lot at stake. On this proposal hung the hopes and dreams of a growing number of scientists committed to using ice cores as a fundamental tool of climate change research. The scientists and technicians who had signed on to this project ranged from faculty with permanent tenured positions to researchers whose sole livelihood depended on support from peer-reviewed grants. The graduate students were eager to learn and become involved in what they hoped would be important careers in science. The undergraduates, in most instances, were getting their first real experience in research. The biggest challenge in doing science today is providing a setting with continuity for people who have dedicated their lives to solving important scientific questions. GISP2 provided funding for five years of support in which all of these individuals would be able to exchange ideas and have an opportunity to make a contribution. The difficulties inherent in creating and holding together teams of people with special- ized capabilities over time remains one of the great obstacles to conducting scientific research in the United States and elsewhere. So we waited to hear from the National Science Foundation, and with so much hanging in the balance, it was hard to be patient. The National Science Foundation (NSF) had begun serious planning for GISP2 in the late 1980s, but it wasn’t an abstract exercise conducted in the NSF’s Washington offices. Government agencies undertake projects of this kind only if they have the backing of key people in the field of study. Part of the planning process, then, involved convincing ice core research leaders to sign up in support of the project. In this case, convincing people to come aboard was not a problem. The fathers of ice core research, people such as Willi Dansgaard of the University of Copenhagen, had previously spearheaded the campaign to conduct ice coring on the Greenland plateau as soon as possible. Dansgaard’s opinions carried tremendous weight in the international scientific community because of his earlier work, which included helping to determine temperature ranges in the past by analyzing ice cores. Dansgaard and his colleagues also had a long history of recovering and interpreting ice cores from the Greenland ice sheet. For example, their early work figured prominently in our understanding of the climate conditions that led to the colonization of and later disappearance from coastal Greenland by the Vikings. Chester Langway of SUNY/Buffalo also helped to lay the foundation for this project. His support made a difference with NSF because he had led the early deep ice core programs in Greenland and Antarctica , and he was known for his ability to get the job done. Claude Lorius, an elegant and articulate French scientist, had conducted pioneering analysis of the results from an earlier Russian/French/ U.S. “Vostok” ice core recovered from Antarctica. Vostok was important because it suggested that a relationship indeed existed between the presence of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere and rising temperatures , so his expertise would be highly relevant (see figure 2.1). The data collected by Lorius’s colleagues has been widely distributed throughout the scientific and policy communities. Former Vice President Al Gore often displays the Vostok carbon dioxide–temperature relationship as an indication of the importance of greenhouse gases. We have also been able to determine from the Vostok record the extraordinary increase in carbon dioxide relative to the last few hundred thousand years. Hans Oeschger, of the University of Bern, best known for his contriThe Making of an Ice Core “Time Machine” 39 ç butions to understanding the carbon...